


Paint My Spirit Gold

by thecouchsofa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Oblivious Harry, discussion of canon character deaths, he’s honestly completely oblivious in canon though so I’m not even sure this needs to be a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-06 11:38:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14056179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecouchsofa/pseuds/thecouchsofa
Summary: Harry might not so secretly love Draco Malfoy’s films, but that doesn’t mean he wants the git making one about his life.





	Paint My Spirit Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt by ea_stofnar. So I took this prompt and ran off with it a bit, but I hope you still like it in the end :) Huge thanks to Ana for the beta.  
> I combined canon from both the books and the movies into this, so the scenes that are filmed are from both, rather than just one or the other.  
> Title is taken from Nothing is Written by Mumford and Sons.

Harry would be the first person to admit that he isn’t exactly the most responsible drunk. Well, maybe not the first; that would be Hermione. Or perhaps Ron. Come to think about it, Dean and even bloody Seamus (the absolute sodding hypocrite) would probably be ahead of him in line to take the piss out of Harry’s drunk self. Regardless, he’s on the list somewhere in recognising his own shame. It’s not that he’s a _bad_ drunk per se, he’s just mildly irresponsible, and plenty gullible. Ron’s favourite story to tell when he wants to embarrass Harry into staying away from the spiced mistletoe Firewhiskey at Weasley family gatherings is the time when Harry got spectacularly smashed at an after work celebratory gathering, and somehow ended up getting volunteering to save an elderly witch’s Crup after it got loose from her yard. Her yard in southern France, to be specific. Hermione had come and gotten him after two days, and had found him doing the woman’s pregnant daughter’s taxes for her, using a French-to-English translation spell in an attempt to understand the words on the parchment in front of him. She’d laughed herself silly for a good five minutes before talking him out of the situation and apparating them to a café in Paris for a much needed coffee. When prompted, he’d only been able to say that he hadn’t wanted to leave the woman to her own devices, and hadn’t been able to say no when she’d asked him for more help.

Molly always cooed and squeezed at Harry’s cheeks when Ron told the story – or one of the many like it – and ranted about how Harry had always been “such a sweet boy”, much to the amusement of Ron and George in particular. Of course, that statement was usually followed up by a wistful retelling of Harry and Ginny’s short-lived relationship, and how she “so wished it could have continued on, dear”.

So, Harry couldn’t really say no when he was drunk. Seamus, the utter bastard, absolutely loved to take advantage of this, and once dared Harry to run naked through a fountain in Muggle London in full view of passers-by. Harry had done it, of course, and Seamus had laughed himself practically into respiratory distress when the Muggle police came and dragged Harry into the back of their car. He’d laughed a little less when Harry had managed to discretely aim a spell at Seamus that vanished the git’s clothes, leading to him also getting carted down to the police station alongside Harry. Hermione had picked them up a few hours later, tutting under her breath and shaking her head as she handed them each a pair of Ron’s spare trousers.

Spending a few hours sobering up covered only by a scratchy wool blanket in the cell of a Muggle police station hadn’t been one of Harry’s best moments, but it utterly _paled_ in comparison to what he’d done recently. Well, he assumed it was recently. If he was honest, he had no idea when he’d apparently signed the rights to his bloody life away, but it had definitely happened at some point. Hermione had sent away for the contract and read it over and everything, verifying the validity of Harry’s looping signature. His very _shaky_ signature that just about missed the allocated line completely, and was that even _legal_? Surely not. Muggles had rules against it, so surely wizards did too.

“What if I’d been under duress?” Harry cried, staring at Hermione in disbelief. “Then it would be void, right?”

“Magical contracts can’t be signed under duress,” Hermione said, shaking her head. “Honestly, Harry. Don’t you think it might be time to put down the Firewhiskey for good after something like this?”

And maybe she was right, but not today. Oh no. _Today_ Harry needed to get spectacularly fucking sloshed, because somewhere along the misguided line that his life had taken, he’d signed his story away to who was quite possibly the worst person for the job imaginable. Well, technically it had been Draco’s business partner who had apparently convinced him to sign the contract, but it would be Draco behind the reins of the project, Harry knew.

“The _worst_ , Hermione.”

“Right,” she said, one eyebrow raised.

“I can’t have actually signed a contract agreeing to this. I wouldn’t, not to him.”

“Would you have agreed to it if anyone else had asked?”

And no, he wouldn’t have. Because the whole thing was a terrible fucking idea, for a myriad of reasons. Reasons Harry would rant for the rest of the afternoon about, if Hermione would be inclined to listen. She wouldn’t be, but mostly because they wouldn’t exactly be news to her. She and Ron knew Harry so well that it frightened him sometimes. It wasn’t even that it was just Harry’s poor judgement, it was the whole bloody scenario. _Nobody_ should have a movie made about their life, except maybe some fantastically influential figure, which Harry would scream until his lungs gave out that he himself _wasn’t_. The Founders of Hogwarts deserved one about them, maybe. Except, that had already happened, as Hermione dutifully pointed out.

“Don’t start,” Harry groaned, dropping his head to the tabletop.

“You _loved_ that movie.”

“I _tolerated_ that movie,” Harry hissed. His eyes flicked from side to side, ensuring there was nobody within earshot. They were alone in Harry’s flat, but one could never be too sure. It wasn’t exactly something he liked to advertise, that he was _mildly_ appreciative of –

“You _love_ Draco’s movies.” Hermione insisted. She crossed her arms over her chest, levelling her gaze at Harry. “You’ve been to see all of them. Usually twice, if not more. I _know_ that you and Ron sit up watching them after I’ve gone to bed. If the two of you would just admit –”

“Lies and slander,” Harry said, waving her off. “That’s obviously some rubbish the _Prophet’s_ gone and printed. You know how they get on a slow news day.”

“Harry, I went with you to see _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ last year at the theatre. You were practically wetting yourself in your seat.”

“I was not.”

“You looked like an overexcited Crup.” Hermione’s voice was turning exasperated, the words rising in pitch. “You were too overjoyed even to finish your snacks.”

“I’d never get excited over _Draco_ , Hermione. Merlin’s sake,” Harry sighed. Perhaps if he rolled his eyes hard enough he could somehow wipe the memory of his reaction to the aforementioned film from her brain. He’d die all over again before he admitted that she was completely right about his reaction to the movie.

“You called him Draco. You only started doing that after you went and saw his first film.”

“Bugger off, that doesn’t mean anything,” Harry snorted. And … maybe it didn’t? He wasn’t even sure anymore, if he was honest. It was just that Draco’s films were _good_. Extremely good. Harry was allowed to like things that were good. It wasn’t a crime. Wouldn’t some say that it was more normal to like things that others also liked, rather than something that nobody else did? And people _did_ like Draco’s films. Loved them, in fact. Whenever he put a new one out everybody went wild. It was all the _Prophet_ would cover for that week, giving Harry a much appreciated break from the reporters who constantly swirled around him like flies. Being the pioneer of wizarding filming, Draco was all anyone wanted to talk about. Harry appreciated the break, but it had gotten a little insane. It was more than a little unnerving seeing promotional posters of Draco’s films and children’s toys bearing his likeness sitting on the shelves next to the awful merchandise that was marketed towards fans of Harry, he had to admit. He’d swear up and down until his face was blue that the figurine he’d bought after the Founders film had come out had been for Teddy. So what if he hadn’t actually given it to him yet, he’d get around to it eventually.

Harry had _wanted_ to dislike Draco’s films, he really had. He was still _Malfoy_ , after all, in the beginning. He’d gone to see Draco’s first film, a tale about the life of Nicolas Flamel that had taken the wizarding world by storm, being the first film of its kind. Hell, the first wizarding film of _any_ kind, which meant that it was a Big Deal. They’d named a bloody film awards show after Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake, which was all kinds of mental. He’d gone into the theatre expecting to hate the film, to want to laugh and throw something at the screen and walk out halfway through. That hadn’t been the case. In fact, what had ended up transpiring had been so laughably different from he’d expected that he’d had to go to the pub and have a few glasses of Firewhiskey afterwards to round himself out again.

He’d expected that seeing Malfoy onscreen would open up more than a few old wounds that certainly didn’t need to be reopened. Harry had sewn them up years ago with a metaphorical needle and thread, and he wasn’t about to let Draco bloody Malfoy tear them open all over again. He’d not seen him since the trials following the war, and even then their visual contact had been brief. Malfoy had run off to Australia almost immediately after being cleared by the Wizengamot, and had stayed there for a few years. He’d not come back until his first film had aired – pioneering the entire bloody industry, for Merlin’s sake – and by then he seemed to be the darling of the wizarding world. Harry had been sent tickets to the premiere of the film in the mail, but he’d declined to go, for obvious reasons. He wasn’t sure who’d sent the tickets, now that he thought about it. It certainly wouldn’t have been Malfoy himself; even after his family name was torn to shreds by public opinion he’d still have some shred of pride, Harry was sure. Harry suspected it was some swift public relations work on behalf of Malfoy’s business partner, some Australian lad named Dave, who Harry was fairly sure was singlehandedly responsible for boosting the country’s wizarding tourist industry after becoming nearly as famous as Malfoy thanks to his directing skills. Harry hadn’t cared to investigate, and had only ended up going to see a late screening of the film because it was all everyone could talk about in the bloody break room at work. He’d had quite enough of not being able to contribute to a single conversation during the day, and eating lunch alone in his office got very annoying very quickly, so he’d let his aversion slide and trudged off to the theatre underneath a glamour, settling himself down in the wide seats of the building that had been constructed solely for the fucking film he was about to watch, and wasn’t _that_ a little bloody dramatic. Harry supposed that it fit Malfoy’s persona incredibly well, so he shouldn’t have expected anything different.

He’d scoffed when Malfoy had first come onscreen, the shot showing him stirring something in a large cauldron, the brightly coloured smoke wafting up from whatever potion he was brewing obscuring and his face slightly as he gazed into it. It was laughable, that Harry’s childhood rival was onscreen right in front of him, but Harry hadn’t been laughing for long. Malfoy had been bloody _fantastic_ in the role, and Harry couldn’t help but admit it to himself. Harry had been able to forget incredibly easily that he was watching Draco bloody Malfoy on the large screen as Flamel moved through the halls of what was said to be Beauxbatons. Harry shivered as he watched Flamel’s successful ventures into alchemy, and ended up on the edge of his seat as Flamel finally managed to create the Philosopher’s Stone. A smile broke out onto his face as he watched Malfoy’s muted celebrations onscreen, his joy portrayed not through large gestures or loud exclamations, but by the reserved smile on his face and his short and sharp movements as he moved about the room.

Harry had sat in the theatre as the credits started to roll, the sight of Malfoy’s wide smile seemingly imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. He’d never seen Malfoy smile with such unbridled happiness before. Actually, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him smile without it being twisted into a smirk, if he thought about it. Clearly the tosser was capable of emulating such an emotion, because he’d done it right there in front of Harry’s eyes. It hadn’t unnerved Harry like he thought it might; rather, it shocked him.

What shocked him even more was the title card at the end of the film, displaying the film’s title with Malfoy’s name directly underneath it. It had billed Malfoy as ‘Draco’ in looping script, and Harry had pulled up short at that, because _what_? There was no way in hell that Malfoy would have dropped his last name from the billing of such a successful movie. Sure, the Malfoy name didn’t exactly carry a whole lot of positive weight in the wizarding world at the time, but Malfoy valued his family name and his heritage. It was something that had always been important to him, that much Harry knew. Harry might not have ever been close with Malfoy, but he did know that much. He’d have thought that Malfoy would use his newfound celebrity status to drag his family name up from the muddy depths it had fallen to after the war, as Lucius had done decades prior, but he’d apparently been completely incorrect.

Harry had waited for days for the _Prophet_ to report on Malfoy filing a lawsuit against whoever had made the decision to keep his last name out of the credits, but no such stories were forthcoming. Harry ended up talking himself into a spiral about how he’d imagined the entire thing, and went to see the film again. He’d enjoyed it no less the second time around; he’d actually liked it _more_. During his second viewing he’d been able to pay more attention to the smaller additional details in the shots that he hadn’t seen before, when he’d been more focused on following along with the rich plot. The thing that stood out to him the most to begin with was that Malfoy’s hair had been darkened slightly for the role, he was sure of it, and his face definitely looked a little older than it did in the photos that the _Prophet_ always splashed across its front page. As the film went on and years of Flamel’s life passed onscreen, lines started to form at the corners of Malfoy’s eyes and by his mouth. His mannerisms changed as he got closer to finding the correct formula for the Philosopher’s Stone, and the subtle ways he interacted with his onscreen wife developed so fully on camera that Harry was a little suspicious about the true nature of Malfoy’s relationship with the actress that played the woman. In the end, Harry hadn’t been imagining Malfoy’s apparent name change; he was credited by his first name only.

Credited more than once, as Harry immediately found out. Malfoy always had been a bit of an overachiever, but wasn’t a starring role, a lead writing credit, and a partial directors credit a little _much_? Harry thought that it certainly was. It was certainly a bit pompous, wasn’t it? Who even did that? _Draco_ did, as it turned out.

And Harry would have spent a little more time teasing Malfoy about the whole thing in his head, but he hadn’t been able to deny that Malfoy – _Draco_ , apparently – had done a bloody fantastic job on the film. Harry had ended up buying a couple of Pensieve vials of the film that were sold through Horntail – the company that distributed the movie, and that Draco and his business partner apparently jointly owned – and still liked to watch it every now and again when he had half a day to spare.

So, no, Hermione hadn’t been wrong about his calling Draco by his first name after seeing the film, nor that he got ridiculously excited when he went to see whatever new film Draco had decided to put out. But getting excited about watching someone else’s life portrayed fantastically onscreen didn’t mean that he wanted to watch his own up there getting torn into little pieces and stretched to breaking point for everybody to see. Harry’s life was already considered public consumption far more so than he’d like, and he didn’t need to fuel the fire even more. Hell, Harry had barely wanted his name in the papers when he and his Auror team made the most successful bust of the year, and he’d worked damn hard to close that case. A notepad and quill still sent shivers down his spine whenever he had the misfortune of seeing them together.

Draco – despite being a bloody brilliant filmmaker in every aspect of the process – would tear Harry’s life to shreds onscreen. Harry could feel it. Draco either wouldn’t be able to do any of it justice, or would fail to give any of the wonderful people that had helped Harry over the years their due credit. Perhaps he wouldn’t even _want_ to do it justice, and it was that thought that sent a bolt of ice through Harry’s stomach. He couldn’t help the poisonous thoughts creeping in that said that perhaps Draco wanted to do this film solely to cause detriment to Harry’s image; their relationship hadn’t exactly been all sunshine and roses over the years, so it wasn’t so farfetched an idea. Harry couldn’t help but picture a film which showcased him as a whiny little brat who talked himself up constantly – as Malfoy had always said during their school years – while the child version of Malfoy strutted about the halls of Hogwarts, trailed by a mass of adoring admirers. Harry knew that he wouldn’t go so far as to portray the losing side of the war in a positive light – or that he’d even want to do that, considering his apparent change of heart whilst the war was waging – but the mere idea of it was enough to make Harry sick to his stomach. Despite it being a farfetched idea, it was still a possibility that deserved some concern.

Hermione apparently wasn’t viewing the complete mess that was Harry’s drunken decision in the same light that he was.

“Go and talk to him,” she said, patting Harry on the shoulder. “If you’re worried about what’s going on than agree to go and advise on the film set.”

That was what had gotten Harry into such a panic; that damned owl that had tapped against his kitchen window as he drank his tea that morning. The first thing that Harry had noticed was that the owl was beautiful, a dark brown colour that looked glossy in the morning light. The second thing he noticed was the handwriting on the front of the envelope. _Harry Potter_ stared out at him from the heavy paper, and Harry very nearly dropped the letter in the sink because he knew that writing. It was the writing that spelled out that now famous first name in looping letters that Harry – along with the rest of the wizarding world – flocked to theatres to go see. It was the writing belonging to the person whose name had been given to a thousand bloody babies that had been born since their namesake had become famous, rivalling Harry’s own name as the most popular one for children in the wizarding world. Most importantly, it was the writing of the person that Harry hadn’t ever expected to hear from again in his life.

 _Perhaps he’s decided to owl me because he knows I’ve been to see his films_ , Harry thought as he stared wide-eyed at the envelope clutched in his fist. _Perhaps he’s going to tell me not to bother going anymore, and that they’ve banned me from the doors_.

Of course that would never happen; Harry Potter would never get banned from anywhere in the wizarding world. But that would have been less of a shock than why Draco had actually been writing to him.

Harry had to stop a few times as he was reading the letter to stare at the off-white paint of his kitchen wall as a mixture of shock and horror descended upon him as he let it sink in that Draco was ‘ _extending an invitation_ ’ for Harry to come and advise on the set of the film that they were making about his terrible fucking life. His stupid, stupid life that was apparently about to get far worse, given the subject of the letter. The git had even spent a paragraph reminding Harry about signing the bloody contract in the first place, like he suspected that Harry would had forgotten, and that was more than a little infuriating in itself, because Harry _had indeed_ forgotten. Forgotten because it had been signed under what should be considered extreme bloody duress, no matter how much Hermione refuted the accusation. The end of the letter made Harry snort through his nose as Draco reminded him that Harry was the one who knew his own life best, and that Draco was “ _under the opinion that the best thing for the project would be for you to come and advise on a few select details_ ”. Harry read it out loud in a poor imitation of the pompous accent that Draco had back when they were in school, and smirked to himself before groaning and dropping the letter onto the table.

He’d called Hermione first, of course. That hadn’t been a lick of help, since all she told him was that the contract was valid, and that it probably would indeed be the best thing for him, and everybody else, if he would go and drag himself down to the film set and keep an eye on everything.

“This could be a good thing, Harry,” she said, taking his hand.

“You’re mental,” Harry said, glancing up at her. “Absolutely sodding –“

“Harry, this is something you can control,” she said, her gaze steady. “Damn near everything that gets printed about you is a load of rubbish, we both know that, but you can make sure that this _isn’t_. When it’s finished, everyone is going to see it.”

“So you want me to make sure that it’s not a heap of lies?” Harry asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I want it to be something that you’re happy with people seeing, and not something that you have to hide from.” She squeezed his hand, her smile comforting. “You can make this into whatever you want, Harry. You should go and do it.”

And, because Hermione Granger was hardly ever wrong about anything ever, he did decide to go.

And it was quite possibly an even worse idea than signing the fucking contract in the first place. Harry was never drinking again.

“Mr. Potter?”

The voice wasn’t one that Harry recognised, but the accent gave away who it was. Draco’s business partner stood in front of Harry, one hand held out for him to shake, a wide smile on his face. _He’s quite attractive_ , Harry noticed, with tan skin and white teeth, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

“That’s me,” Harry said after a moment, reaching out to shake the man’s hand.

“Fantastic,” Dave said, nodding his head. “I’m Dave Palmo, we met a few months ago at the Leaky Cauldron.”

“My apologies, I was a little out of it at the time,” Harry said, cracking a small smile.

“Yeah, sorry about the celebratory drinks. I might have overdone it a little bit,” Dave said, smiling sheepishly. “Well, care to come for a bit of a look around?”

Harry thought to himself that, objectively, he was quite lucky to be where he was as Dave walked him towards a massive warehouse that the main bits of filming were apparently taking place in. He couldn’t think of a single person that wouldn’t pay an eye watering amount of money to be allowed to wander around the set of the first wizarding film company in history, and he himself would have been absolutely ecstatic if he were there under literally _any other_ circumstances.

The warehouse looked even bigger on the inside somehow, even with the massive amounts of shelving and the areas cordoned off into little rooms that Harry couldn’t properly see into. Objects flew around in their air above Harry’s head, zipping between destinations with nobody in sight to control them. As Harry watched, numerous house elves popped in and out of view, zipping around with bits and pieces clutched in their hands.

“We usually get around by apparating, but I thought I’d give you a proper tour,” Dave explained, gesturing to one of the house elves. “I’ll get someone to show you the different apparation points later. Only the house elves can apparate outside of those specific areas.”

“Why house elves?” Harry asked, frowning.

“Their magic works differently,” Dave shrugged. “And they value confidentiality more highly than your average gossip hungry witch or wizard. They’re all quite excited to be here, really. We’re paying them well, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Oh,” Harry said, because he had indeed been a little concerned about it.

“Draco told me about your friend who championed house elf rights; Hermione,” Dave said. “Terrifying woman, by the sound of the letter she sent me about your contract. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, since that’s exactly how Draco wrote her.”

Despite Harry knowing exactly where he was and that a movie was currently being made about his life, Dave’s comment still took him by surprise. Of course Hermione would be in a movie about his life. Why wouldn’t she be? She’d been one of his best friends for years, and a major part of Harry’s life and his overall story, but it was still odd to hear that Draco _wrote her_ , like she was a character in a fantasy novel, rather than a living, breathing person that Harry had spoken to just the day before, when he’d gone over to the house she and Ron shared to have tea and listen to a Quidditch game on the wireless.

“It must be odd,” Dave said, turning to glance at Harry. “Having a film made about you. Draco made it sound like you’d be a hard sell, but you seemed pretty keen on it at the pub.”

Harry wanted to call bullshit, but he bit his tongue. It was far more likely that Dave’s insistence had worn him down extremely quickly, than it was that he’d been in any way, shape or form excited about having his life up on a movie screen.

“That’s the set for Great Hall,” Dave was saying, gesturing to their left at a partially closed off area of the warehouse. He stepped to the side when a bench whizzed past his head, disappearing into the room.

“The Great Hall?” Harry asked, frowning slightly.

“Yep,” Dave nodded. “We’ve got the Forbidden Forest out through there,” he pointed off to the side. “And the Gryffindor Common Room and dorm room sets are through there as well.”

Harry’s eyes widened as Dave pointed out various rooms and pieces of sets as they walked through the warehouse. It was without a doubt the most mental thing Harry had ever seen. Not because of the sheer amount of things that were going on, but because it was _his life_. All the places where he’d made memories throughout his schooling years were laid out before him, like little disjointed puzzle pieces that were yet to be connected together. The only thing missing was the people.

“Where is everyone?” Harry asked, glancing around.

Despite the frankly insane amount of house elves that looked to be popping around, there were no actual people milling about the place. Harry had expected there would be quite a few, considering it was apparently a bustling film set.

“Everyone’s off on location today,” Dave said, leaning against one of the large shelves. It looked to contain mostly books of varying sizes and colours. “The Headmistress of Hogwarts allowed us to use the Lake as a filming location for the next few days, so it’s unlikely any of the actors will be back until Thursday. Besides Draco, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry echoed, his eyes wide. “Wait, the Lake? Why do you need to go to the Lake?”

Dave raised one eyebrow, shooting Harry a quizzical look. “For the Triwizard Tournament? That was the second task, wasn’t it?”

“The second task?” Harry repeated.

“You don’t remember the script at all, do you?” Dave said, letting out a snort of laughter. “Ah, right. Draco tends to keep the scripts for works in progress under insanely tight security, but I think there’s an early outline in my office.” Dave laughed again, glancing at Harry. “Christ, how drunk were you, mate?”

“Apparently very,” Harry said, and followed Dave down a row of shelving units towards his office.

The office was smaller than Harry had expected, just a room with a desk and a bookshelf, both in a minimalistic style. As Dave spelled open one of the drawers of his desk, Harry looked around in a manner he hoped was discreet. The wizarding photos on the bookshelf were of the most interest to Harry, and his eyes were immediately drawn to a photo of Dave and Draco at what looked to be a movie premiere. There was one next to it of Dave and Draco on a beach, their arms thrown over the other’s shoulders, wide smiles on their faces. As Harry watched, the beach photo cycled through Draco and Dave laughing, before a pretty young woman was pulled into the shot by one of them, also laughing and beaming at the camera.

“We took those back at home,” Dave said, coming to stand next to Harry and nodding at the photos.

Harry opened his mouth to apologise for looking, but Dave shot him a reassuring smile. “Do you miss it?” he asked instead. “It looks beautiful.”

“It is,” Dave agreed, handing Harry a relatively thin stack of parchment. “Now, this is only the early outline of the script, but you can send Draco an owl and I’m sure he’ll be happy to give you a copy of the proper one.”

“Right,” Harry said, glancing down at the parchment.

“It’s spelled so that only you can look at it. Confidentiality, you know?”

Harry nodded, and tucked the parchment into his coat. “Let me know when you, uh, need me to advise, I suppose.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly, not sure what to do with his hands.

“I’ll have to ask Draco,” Dave said, shrugging. “He’s the one that wrote the script. He’s being amazingly secretive with this one, I’m not sure why. Maybe you can get it out of him.”

“Maybe,” Harry said, though that was about as likely as Crups raining from the bloody sky. Since when had Harry Potter ever been able to convince Draco Malfoy to do anything? Dave clearly hadn’t done his research on their relationship, or lack thereof.

*

It was fantastically odd, sitting down to read the outline of one’s life. Harry sat down on his couch with a large mug of tea and stared at the parchment for a good five minutes before flipping the cover page over, just pondering the sheer absurdity of it all. Harry stared at his last name in bold letters on the parchment, Draco’s looping script scribbled next to it, declaring it the working title for the film. The juxtaposition of the word ‘Potter’ sitting just above the words ‘script by Draco Malfoy’ was something Harry still wasn’t sure how to process, so he just sort of pushed it away. He flipped over to the next page and his breath caught in his throat. The names of his parents stared up at him from the page, cutting through him like a knife.

 _No_ , Harry thought. He didn’t want the names of his parents caught up in Draco’s bloody film. Their deaths, though extremely public considering Harry’s pretty much lifelong celebrity status, still felt private to him, and there was no way he was letting Draco retell them on film. Absolutely no way.

Harry scrambled for a spare bit of parchment and a quill, scribbling out a letter to Draco in barely legible scrawl.

_Draco,_

_I need to speak with you about some of the things you’re putting in the film. Make time tomorrow morning._

_Harry_

Dave had been right, the outline was clearly rough, and Draco’s handwriting filled the page with notes and crossed out bits of text. From what Harry could gather from Draco’s corrections and additions, the film would begin at Godric’s Hollow, before briefly showing his first few weeks at Hogwarts. It would then jump forward to his fourth year, and the utter mess that had been the Triwizard Tournament. After that, it would stick quite closely to Harry’s life up until the end of the war. There were a lot of gaps missing, though Harry supposed that was to be expected when he had an outline in front of him, rather than a full script. Some of the details that Draco had added in post-printing were a little questionable, and there were more than a few question marks scattered about his notes. Harry snorted when he saw Draco’s little add on of ‘ _check the_ Prophet _stories for that week_ ’ next to a number of sections. Clearly Draco had had to do quite a bit more research than Harry had anticipated him doing. Sometimes Harry forgot that there was still quite a bit of his life that the public didn’t know about, despite it feeling like every little detail of his teenage and young adult years had constantly been up for public consumption.

The reply to Harry’s owl came only a half hour later, startling Harry from his intense focus on the script. The owl that delivered Draco’s reply was the same gorgeous glossy brown animal that had delivered Draco’s original letter to Harry nearly a week beforehand, and Harry smiled when he saw her. Harry fed her an owl treat as he untied the letter from her leg, stroking a hand gently down her back. The owl didn’t wait for a reply, simply taking off out the window after finishing the proffered treat. Harry stood at the window and watched her go, before closing it behind her.

He ran his finger down the side of the letter as he chewed at his lip, frowning down at the floor. What if Draco didn’t actually want his input, and had only been asking to be polite? It was certainly possible; Draco had never wanted his help in the time that they’d known each other. Why would he start now? It wasn’t like there was anything Harry could do about it if Draco threw the invitation back in his face; the film would still get made regardless. The contract Harry signed made sure of that, however unfortunate that may be. If the film sucked then Harry could scream to the high heavens and anyone else that was around that it was inaccurate, or was a load of drivel, but who would listen? Nobody that didn’t already know that the details were a load of bollocks, that’s who. The general public never seemed to care what was true and what was sheer falsification where the details of Harry’s life were concerned, and Harry very much doubted that they were about to have a collective change of heart anytime soon.

Harry needn’t have worried, because Draco didn’t throw the offer back in his face.

_Harry,_

_I have an opening tomorrow at nine, if it suits. Come by the warehouse, I’ll have one of the elves let you in._

_Regards,_

_Draco Malfoy_

Harry nodded to himself and pushed the parchment away, staring up at the ceiling. After a few moments he reached for a fresh sheet and his quill, tugging the script outline towards him and began to note.

*

The warehouse was still quiet the next day when Harry apparated to the grounds at five to nine. Harry supposed that everyone was still ‘on location’, or whatever Dave had said. A house elf greeted him at the door to the warehouse, ushering him through the door and directing him down the rows of shelves towards where Harry was pretty sure Dave’s office was also located. Another house elf was waiting for him when he caught sight of the corridor that Dave’s office came off of, the elderly elf directing him towards a dark brown door. She knocked on it and announced Harry’s presence, gesturing for him to go in. Harry did, and stopped short once he’d stepped into the room. Draco’s office was perhaps even more minimalistic than Dave’s, with a startling lack of personal items in the small room. In place of a bookcase there was a small couch with a low table sitting in front of it. A vase of pink flowers atop it brought a splash of colour to that corner of the room, brightening the area. Harry’s eyes trailed past the generic image of an ocean on the wall, and came to rest on Draco himself. Harry started as his eyes locked onto Draco’s, as though he hadn’t expected him to actually be there. In Harry’s defence, Draco looked to be taken off guard as much as Harry was, but Harry managed to recover quicker.

“Hello,” Harry said, clearing his throat.

Draco’s eyes snapped up from where they had been trailing down Harry’s body and he stood up, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.

“Harry,” Draco said, inclining his head in greeting. His face twisted slightly as he said it, before he smoothed it out. “My apologies, that’s a little informal.”

“It’s fine,” Harry said, sitting in the chair in front of Draco’s desk. “I suppose I started it.”

“But I always had been more willing to abide by appropriate social conventions than you, had I not?” Draco asked, sitting back down and smoothing out the front of his expensive looking robes.

Harry bit back the barb that he’d been about to throw at Draco, something along the lines of his poncy upbringing not working out so well for him in the end, but Draco spoke before he could say anything.

“I’ve been so used to calling your character by your first name that it’s a little odd to go back. Gets a bit confusing calling both the movie as well as the main character ‘Potter’ when you’re assisting with directing, you understand?”

Harry nodded, though he wasn’t really entirely sure what Draco was on about. “Right.”

“Moving on,” Draco said, sliding a stack of parchment towards Harry. “I understand that my business partner gave you his copy of the early outline of the script yesterday?”

“Uh, yes,” Harry said. Shifting in his seat to get at his jeans pocket. “I have a few corrections –“

“That’s the early outline, Harry. The script barely looks like that now,” Draco said, glancing up at him. His eyes looked incredibly grey against the cool black of his robes, and Harry forced himself to look away, lest Draco catch him staring and start thinking he was even more of an absolute tool than he likely already did. Thinking the other was up for a Largest Tosser on the Planet award didn’t exactly make for a good start to a business relationship, after all.

“Well I still have corrections,” Harry said, slapping the parchment down on the table. “Let’s start with the first bit of the script, shall we?”

Draco sighed and leaned back a bit in his chair, raising his eyebrows at Harry.

“You’re the one that asked me here,” Harry pointed out, mirroring Draco’s reclined stance.

“To _advise_ , not to take creative control,” Draco said, clenching his jaw. “I was hoping you could simply fill in some of the blanks where specific details were concerned.”

“Why, there’s lots of information about me out there?” Harry said, mostly just to be a dick. He knew he was being difficult, but so was Draco. They’d always brought that out in each other.

“And I assume that most of it is incorrect,” Draco replied coolly. “I would have thought that you would want a movie based on your life to be as factually accurate as possible.”

“I do,” Harry said, sliding the parchment filled with his notes towards Draco a fraction more. “But I have some corrections first.”

Draco sighed again and stared at Harry with an exasperated look. He leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the table. “Fine, show me what you have. Most of the glaring errors have already been fixed, mind you, but you can go ahead and point them out again if you’re so inclined.”

“Fine,” Harry said, pushing his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “Note one: cut the whole first bit out.”

“Fuck off,” Draco snorted, shaking his head.

“I’m serious,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows. “You’re not showing the deaths of my parents in your movie. It’s not happening.”

“And what would you do about it if I did?” Draco asked. His face had hardened, more closely resembling the Malfoy of Harry’s schooldays rather than the Draco that graced every wizarding film screen in the country.

“I could go to the _Prophet_ ,” Harry said, thinking on his feet. “I could tell everyone that your film is made up of complete and utter lies, and that the rest of your projects probably were too. They’d all listen to me, you know they would.” And they probably wouldn’t, but Harry hoped that Draco wouldn’t call his bluff.

He didn’t. Instead he sighed and rubbed at his temples, shooting Harry a glare. “Fine. I did invite you here to assist with the details, so I might as well listen to you for a few minutes.”

“Good,” Harry said, a little shocked that Draco hadn’t put up more of a fight on that bit. “Take the first part out.”

“How about a compromise?” Draco asked, leaning forward. He looked less exasperated and more interested now.

“No compromise,” Harry said. “You’re not showing the deaths of my parents onscreen. It’s tasteless.”

“Yes, it is,” Draco said, much to Harry’s surprise. “I wasn’t planning on showing them. That would be a little gruesome, don’t you think? We’re wanting the audience to sympathise with you and root for you, not run from the theatre within the first five minutes because the opening scene makes their stomachs turn. We want to keep people in their seats, not sprinting out of the theatre.”

Harry’s brain was still stuck on the utter absurdity that was Draco Malfoy saying that people should be bloody _rooting for him_. Somehow he’d apparently tripped and fallen into another dimension, one where Draco Malfoy wanted people to like him, rather than actively despise him. Perhaps the Australian sun had gotten to his brain while he’d been over there.

“I was thinking something a little more reserved,” Draco said, shuffling some of the parchment on his desk. “I wouldn’t show their deaths onscreen, Harry.” His voice went quieter as he fiddled with the sleeve of his robes. “That’s just … disrespectful. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Ok,” Harry nodded, and somehow he believed him. He wasn’t sure why he did; the man in front of him was still _Malfoy_ , the slightly tanned skin from his time in the sun didn’t change that. The film studio and successful acting jobs didn’t change that. But somehow Harry truly did believe him. “But I think I still have some more edits.”

“Alright,” Draco said, straightening his back and meeting Harry’s eyes. “I can’t promise that anything will be changed since we’ve already started filming, but you can bring them up. I suppose I can’t stop you.”

As Draco had predicted, many of Harry’s critiques had already been dealt with either through research, or through Draco’s creative process as he developed the rough outline into a proper script.

“I know full well that you didn’t fight the Dark – _Voldemort_ ,” Draco said, forcing the name out, “with your bare fists at the end of fourth year. I’m not daft.”

“Well that’s what the outline makes it sound like,” Harry said, shrugging.

“Well it’s not. And, for that matter, I know you didn’t have some whirlwind romance whilst at those bloody Slug Club parties in sixth year. It was a bit of a personal joke, not something that was ever going to make the final cut.”

“Right,” Harry nodded, crossing through his note on the extra bit of parchment about that particular incorrect fact. “What about Ginny?”

“What about her?” Draco asked, frowning.

“There’s a few bits that makes it seem like we were having it on throughout school.”

“Weren’t you?” Draco raised an eyebrow, suddenly looking interested.

“No,” Harry snorted. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“It sort of is, really,” Draco said, smirking. “Considering I’m making a film about your life. Now, back to Ginevra.”

“There’s no ‘back to’,” Harry said. “There’s not much to speak of, really. Nothing that should be in a film about me, anyway. I doubt she’d want our failed relationship up on the big screen for everyone to take a look at. It was awful enough having it on the front page of the _Prophet_.”

“Hmm,” Draco said, linking his fingers together thoughtfully. “I was under the impression that the two of you had some sort of torrid romance through the halls of Hogwarts.”

“Well you thought wrong,” Harry said. And he had no idea how he’d gotten here, talking about his and Ginny’s failed relationship with Draco bloody Malfoy of all people. Surely he’d suffered enough already?

“Interesting,” Draco said. “Perhaps there might be a proper use for you after all. I’ve got a copy of the script that you can borrow to make suggestions on, but there’s one catch.”

“What’s the catch?” Harry asked. Knowing the Draco of the past, he would probably get Harry to do something utterly humiliating in order to get his hands on the completed script. He was pleasantly surprised about what Draco’s follow up was.

“It can’t be more than fifty feet from me at all times,” Draco said, his eyes flicking up to meet Harry’s, the side of his mouth quirking up ever so slightly.

“Oh,” Harry said, brow furrowing. That was something he hadn’t expected.

“It’s a security precaution –“

“I understand,” Harry said, shrugging. “Your films are popular, and all the papers want is a new bit of information about them. The whole thing would be ruined if the full script got out.”

“Right,” Draco said. He looked surprised that Harry was being, he supposed, _reasonable_ , which wasn’t a very fair thought to be having. If anyone was the unreasonable one, it was Draco, it always had been. Harry was super bloody reasonable. He’d show Draco just how sodding reasonable he was.

“I can work with that,” Harry said, though he wasn’t sure that he could, realistically. Fifty feet wasn’t a very large distance. What was he supposed to do, lock himself in Dave’s office across the hall and read through the script while Draco sat in his own office waiting for him to finish? And what happened when Draco needed to be on set, which was apparently quite often? Despite those glaring complications, Harry repeated “I can work with that”, because he was a daft asshole.

“We can set up times for you to go through it,” Draco said, waving his wand and sending the script back into the drawer of his desk. “I have meetings for the rest of the week, so the soonest I could do would be Saturday.”

“Brill,” Harry said, despite it not being all that brill, really. He was starting to expect that he and Draco would survive in each other’s presence only through their sheer levels of spite.

“Then I suppose I’ll see you on Saturday,” Draco said. “Does eleven work for you?”

“Eleven’s fine,” Harry said. He felt compelled to stand and begin to take his leave, conscious of the fact that Draco was ushering him out in the most underhandedly polite way possible. “See you then.”

“See you,” Draco said, and his office door shut behind Harry.

“Huh,” Harry said to the empty hallway.

*

Saturday came much faster than Harry had expected, and he found himself running late for his meeting with Draco. He was clutching a large coffee in his hand when he knocked on the door to Draco’s office before letting himself in.

“You’re late,” Draco said, barely glancing up from his positon at his desk, head bowed as he poured over what looked to be a heap of documents.

“Sorry,” Harry said, sitting in the chair in front of Draco. “Had a hard time extricating myself from Teddy this morning. He’s going through a bit of a phase, I think. Always gets a bit weepy whenever anyone goes somewhere he can’t follow.”

Draco’s head snapped up at the mention of Teddy’s name, and Harry’s brain slowly caught up to itself as he remembered that Teddy and Draco were technically related to each other, despite the lack of time they spent together. In fact, Harry wasn’t sure if Draco had ever actually met Teddy.

“Andromeda’s grandson, yes?” Draco asked, fiddling with the dark sleeve of his robes. Harry quirked an eyebrow as he watched, remembering that Draco had done the same thing the previous time they’d seen each other, when they’d been discussing the deaths of Harry’s parents. Draco had looked uncomfortable then, and he certainly did now, as if he was dipping his toes into uncharted waters that he’d previously been warned not to cross.

“That’s right,” Harry said, nodding. “He’s brilliant, really.”

“I’m sure,” Draco said. He straightened his back and his face melted into that impassive mask that he apparently defaulted to.

“So, where am I supposed to go to read this?” Harry asked, pointing to the script which sat next to Draco’s elbow. “Dave’s office?”

“Hardly,” Draco snorted, the edge of his mouth quirking up briefly. “Made friends with him already, did you? He’s definitely good at that, I must say. Though how else would he have gotten you to sign that bloody contract?”

“By feeding me copious amounts of Firewhiskey, apparently,” Harry said, before he could stop himself. After realising that he was divulging yet more personal information to Draco, he realised that he didn’t particularly care. The whole bloody film was his personal information after all, what harm could a bit more do? Besides, it wasn’t like he’d ever let his guard down around Draco enough to let himself get roped into something while drunk. Prevention was the best protection, after all. “And I wouldn’t say that we’re friends, but he doesn’t seem like a bad bloke.”

“He’s not,” Draco snorted, and his smile was genuine. “He’s an absolute tosser, but he’s a bit bloody brilliant. And, no, you’re not going into Dave’s office.”

“Where then?”

Draco nodded off to Harry’s side. Harry turned his head to glance at Draco’s couch, and made a small “ah” of understanding.

“Nothing more private?” Harry asked, not really expecting Draco to give him any more leeway, which he didn’t.

“No. What would be the point, when we’ll need to have a discussion about your no doubt supremely helpful additions anyway?”

“I suppose,” Harry said, ignoring Draco’s jab. He took the script when Draco held it out to him, brushing his fingers over the top page as he glanced down.

“It’s only a working title, but I haven’t found anything better,” Draco said as Harry glanced down at his own name on the cover.

“It’s accurate, I suppose,” Harry said, shrugging.

“Read up to page twelve, that’s what’s been filmed so far. We haven’t gotten much further than that, but the other scenes that have been shot haven’t been in chronological order due to constraints on the filming locations,” Draco said. His voice increased in speed slightly as the sentence wore on, until he was babbling by the end of it. His cheeks went a little pink when he finished, and he glanced down at the documents in front of him.

“Thanks,” Harry said in reply, and moved to the couch. It was more comfy than it looked, and Harry sunk gratefully back into it, sighing in satisfaction. He rolled his shoulders as he got comfortable, conscious of the fact that he could feel Draco’s eyes on him. The tosser was probably making sure he didn’t dirty up his bloody couch just by sitting on it.

The first twelve pages of the script seemed to be mostly setting the scene for the tone of the film. Harry was pleased to note that the deaths of his parents weren’t included in a scene at all, and that instead the first shot of the film would be narration against a backdrop of billowing potions smoke in various colours, read by the actor who was playing Harry. Their untimely deaths weren’t discussed in detail, and only details necessary for the story were included. Judging by what Harry could see from the beginning of the script, the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Dursley’s also hadn’t been written in. They were mentioned only in passing, as the narrator explained that Harry had been raised by Muggles with no knowledge of magic. Harry opened his mouth to correct the detail about the Dursley’s having no idea that magic existed, before deciding to leave it. There was no point in making the knowledge known to Draco if Harry didn’t want it included in the film in the first place. Their treatment of him wasn’t common knowledge, and Harry didn’t want it to be.

It was a few pages in that Harry found his first correction that he didn’t particularly mind being added into the film.

“The bit about me choosing my first wand is missing some details,” Harry said, glancing over at Draco.

“Oh?” Draco asked, quirking his eyebrow.

“I tried out a few wands before settling on my final one,” Harry said, looking back down at the script. “I tried out wands that were similar to those of my parents, but neither of them worked.”

“Hmm,” Draco said, putting down his quill. “Is that something that you specifically want included?”

“I don’t mind,” Harry replied. “I just thought that I should tell you.”

“We might leave it, since that scene has already been shot. If it ends up that it would make a difference to the final piece than we can add it in later.”

“Won’t you have already sent the actor away, though?” Harry asked. He doubted that Draco would keep an eleven year old on retainer for the rest of filming if they weren’t needed for any other scenes.

“No?” Draco replied, raising an eyebrow. “He’ll be here for the rest of his scenes.”

“I thought that you said the bits that showed me starting Hogwarts were already filmed?”

“They are,” Draco said. He was talking a little slowly, like he thought that Harry was a bit thick. “But he still has to be here to play you.”

Harry’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Draco’s eyes widened a little.

“My apologies,” he said, smoothing down the sleeve of his robes. “I sometimes forget that not everyone is familiar with how we do things here. Let me explain: the same actor is playing you throughout the film, and we adjust his appearance as your character ages up. It’s the most effective way to get a consistent performance, I’ve found.”

“Oh,” Harry said, his eyes widening in surprise. “How do you do that?”

“A combination of a simple youth potion and a few minor glamour tricks. It’s much the same format to getting the actor to look like you in the first place.”

“So you don’t use polyjuice?” Harry asked. Though he knew that Draco hadn’t been close enough to him to nick some of his hair recently, Dave could have done it when they’d been at the pub. Harry likely wouldn’t have noticed if he’d been plied with enough Firewhiskey beforehand.

“Not at all.” Draco looked scandalized, the mild horror on his face making Harry let out a snort of laughter. “That opens up whole range of legal issues, and brings up the possibility for identity theft. We’d never do something as brash as that.”

“So you just use glamour’s then? I wouldn’t have thought that would end up looking as convincing.”

“It takes a fair bit of work to make it look acceptable, yes,” Draco replied. “It still isn’t completely perfect in the end, but it’s certainly more than good enough. Besides, I doubt that you would have agreed to go along with giving up your hair for a polyjuice potion if I had asked you to.”

“No, I wouldn’t have,” Harry agreed.

“My point exactly. Any further additions?”

“You haven’t got anything in here about the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Wrong film, Harry,” Draco snorted. Harry glanced over to see him shaking his head as he scribbled something down on the parchment in front of him. “But it’s nice to know that you’re a fan of my work.”

Harry’s cheeks went red, despite that not being at all what he’d meant.

“I’m talking about our first year, actually,” he said. “I seem to remember you being quite cut up about Slytherin losing the Cup because of it, so I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

“What I remember is Dumbledore throwing away points to you and your group of friends. It was a flimsy excuse to give Gryffindor the House Cup.” Draco had put down his quill, and was now looking at Harry. “Quite a bit of favouritism going on there, don’t you think?”

“Maybe, but I’m probably entitled to it given that I saved the school, at the bare minimum.”

“You’re barking,” Draco snorted.

“Everyone was talking about it,” Harry cried. There was a zero percent chance that Draco hadn’t heard about it at the time. It had been all people were talking about until they’d pulled up to Kings Cross.

“Everyone was _gossiping_ ,” Draco said. “I’m not filling my movie with inane gossip, Harry.”

“It’s not gossip,” Harry said. “Do you really not know?”

“Enlighten me,” Draco said, though he still looked unconvinced.

Harry didn’t really dwell on it, giving Draco a quick rundown of the incidents that happened below the trapdoor in his first year, and how he’d managed to defeat Voldemort.

“That’s really what happened to that utter nut, Quirrell?” Draco asked. “Blimey, we all thought they were rumours and that he’d gone and had a bit of a breakdown. He’d always seemed on the edge of one.”

Harry shrugged, twirling a quill between his fingers.

“Right,” Draco said, tapping a finger against his lip. “Adding all that in might impact the flow of the film, is all. We’d have to add in most of the events from that year, or it would jump around too much. I’ll have to consult with Dave, but we might leave that out for now, and go straight to fourth year as planned.”

“Alright,” Harry said. “It’s your film.” He supposed that he wouldn’t bother mentioning the Basilisk then, either.

“Yes, it is,” Draco said. He smiled slightly to himself before smoothing out his features. “What I really wanted you here for is the Triwizard Tournament. You know all about Krum’s book, I’m sure, but between me and you, I suspect that it’s more than a little biased, and it’s not nearly enough to go on when he’s only a minor character for that bit of the film.”

Harry flipped through the script until he got to the page marked ‘the first task’.

“Skip the first one,” Draco said. He waved his wand and the script flipped through the pages itself, landing on ‘the second task’. “We all know what happened with the dragon, we were all watching. What we don’t know about are the things that only you were there for.”

“Right,” Harry said. “So you want me to describe to you what happened in the Lake?”

“Just tell me if there’s any glaring errors,” Draco said. “We’ve already begun filming, so small incorrect details are fine, as long as the overall story is the same. You can have a bit more of a pick at the third task if you must, as well as the, uh, graveyard scene.”

“The graveyard scene?” Harry said. His head whipped around as he looked up at Draco. “You’re showing Cedric’s death?”

“Not in detail,” Draco said. “We don’t have to show it onscreen, but it does need to be at the very least heavily hinted at. It was an enormously publicised incident, after all.”

“I guess,” Harry said. A heavy weight sat in the pit of his stomach as recalled the incident. “But how do you know about what happened in the graveyard?”

“You were blurting things out when you came back with the portkey, Harry. The public knows enough about it to paint a picture. And, uh, I’ve heard things.”

“You’ve heard things?”

Draco was fiddling with the sleeve of his robes again, his eyes downcast. “Yes. From my father’s … associates.”

“Oh,” Harry said. And that would make sense, that Draco had heard stories from various Death Eaters about what had happened. His father had been there, after all, as had the fathers of both of his best friends at the time. Of course he’d know enough about it.

What was interesting to Harry, though, was how Draco phrased knowing information about the incident. He’d labelled his sources as his _father’s_ associates, despite them being known to him as well, and despite him likely working fairly closely with them during his time in Voldemort’s ranks. Harry was a little shocked at how blatantly ashamed and uncomfortable Draco looked merely bringing up the subject, as though he’d rather be doing literally anything other than sitting there talking to Harry about his connections to Voldemort’s Death Eaters. Harry wondered if he still had the Mark on his arm, that awful black stain of a thing that Harry knew had been there, but that he’d never actually seen on Draco’s skin up close.

“You can discuss changes to those parts with Dave, if you’d rather,” Draco said. Harry could see that he was clenching his jaw, his shoulders hunched stiffly. “I understand if there are parts of this script that you would rather not discuss with me.”

“That’s not it,” Harry heard himself say. And somehow it wasn’t, though he wasn’t sure why. Draco’s assumption really should be correct; Harry shouldn’t want to discuss Voldemort or his experiences with his followers with Draco, for obvious reasons. But somehow that was incorrect. The fact that Draco appeared to be so uncomfortable by the mere bringing up of the topic told Harry most of what he needed to know, and eased quite a few of his concerns about the creative direction of the film. He found it hard to believe that the Draco right there in front of him would want to glorify the Death Eaters in his film. In fact, it seemed almost like he wanted to glorify _Harry_ , which was the most unexpected thing of all. So Harry took a deep breath and pressed on. “I don’t mind talking about it with you.”

Draco didn’t look convinced, but he also didn’t rebuff what Harry was saying. He merely nodded down at the script and returned to his work, the sound of his quill scratching at the parchment in front of him the only sound in the room.

It was a good hour later that Harry spoke up, clearing his throat and breaking their comfortable silence. “Did you just make up the challenges that happened in the maze?”

“No, I got most of them from Krum’s book,” Draco said, not looking up. “Others are more popular speculations by the _Prophet_ and the _Quibbler_ that were published around the time of the Tournament.”

“Well Krum’s not a reputable source, since he was out of his mind for most of the task,” Harry said.

“What?”

“Yeah, he was totally out of it. Right before we went in Dumbledore told us that we might lose ourselves inside the maze, and Krum did.”

Draco looked intrigued, leaning back in his chair. “Make a list.”

“What?”

“Make a list of some of the tasks and I might change them.”

“You have to change them, they’re incorrect,” Harry insisted. “And Krum didn’t save Fleur, I did. Well, I tried to. He’s the one that attacked her.”

“Well I can’t exactly put that in there,” Draco said, waving his hand.

“Why not? That’s what happened.”

“Do you have any idea how much Krum could sue Horntail for if I portrayed him as a villain in this film?” Draco asked, raising his eyebrows. “He’s a wealthy man, Harry. I have to be careful about what I include here.”

“But it’s what happened,” Harry cried. “And he’s not the villain, the maze just got to him. I don’t think it was his fault.”

“I doubt that’s how he’ll see it,” Draco replied. “That part stays out. Now, write a list of what challenges you faced in the maze, and I’ll see if there are any that I can use.”

Harry frowned down at the parchment in front of him, weighing his options. He supposed that Draco was right, and that Krum wouldn’t want himself depicted in such a way in the film, despite it being entirely accurate.

It was a good while later when Harry slapped the parchment filled with his notes down onto Draco’s desk, startling Draco from his position hunched over the same pile of documents that he’d been working through before, though the stack didn’t look at all diminished.

“Merlin,” Draco muttered, glancing up at Harry. “Give a man some warning.”

“It’s a small room, Draco,” Harry replied.

Draco’s mouth quirked up slightly at the corners when Harry said his given name, as though it still surprised him that Harry was using it. “What have you got?”

“ _This_ is what happened,” Harry said, tapping his finger on the parchment. “No flying pixies, no unicorns, and definitely no visions of dying family members. Also, Cedric and I didn’t fight each other for the Cup, we agreed to touch it together. And while you’re at it, take out the bit about me dating Parvati Patil, because that didn’t happen.”

“You went to the Yule Ball with her,” Draco said frowning.

“Yes, but as friends.”

“The film might fare better with a romance subplot,” Draco said, studying Harry intensely. “You’re not honestly telling me that you didn’t have any romantic relationships whilst at school?”

“I kissed Cho Chang once, but it was bloody awful,” Harry said. He shuddered slightly at the memory. “Might want to leave that one out.”

“I don’t believe you,” Draco said.

“What, that I kissed Cho Chang?”

“No, that that’s _all_ you did. You’re the bloody Chosen One, for Merlin’s sake.”

“So?”

“ _So_ that means that you should have been getting it on with more girls than any of us.”

“Well I wasn’t,” Harry shrugged. “Wasn’t super interested, to be honest with you. I was usually more preoccupied with not dying every year.”

“So you say that you had _no_ romantic relationships with women at Hogwarts?” Draco said. He was leaning forward now, his eyes glinting with something like interest. “And how about with men?”

“Uh,” Harry said, his eyes going wide. He could feel his cheeks going red as he struggled to find something to say. “No?”

“Was that an answer, or a question?” Draco asked. His fingers tapped rhythmically on the table, and he looked like he’d struck gold. “You and Cedric Diggory did seem to be hanging around each other a fair bit in fourth year. Some sources did mention something about the public suggestion of a bath.”

“Fuck, Merlin, no,” Harry cried as he took a step back. “Definitely not.” There was no way in hell he was letting his maybe possibly existent secret crush on Cedric during fourth year into the film. _That_ was not how he was looking to come out.

“Pity,” Draco said. He thankfully dropped the subject, eyes moving across the parchment that was filled with Harry’s notes. “What would you say was the most emotionally tolling task on this list for you? The Boggart?”

“Uh, I don’t really know,” Harry said truthfully. “The whole thing with Krum was pretty bad.”

“Besides that?”

“The maze itself, maybe. It was very eerie, and you never knew what was going to come at you.”

“Atmospheric horror, then. Dave will love that,” Draco said, nodding. “That will give him the chance to do some of that fancy cinematography he loves. We can probably leave out a few of the challenges.”

“But then it won’t be accurate.”

“Wizarding films might be longer than Muggle ones, Harry, but the audience doesn’t want to sit there for a full hour watching you try to figure out a riddle.”

“It didn’t take me an hour,” Harry shot back, frowning. “More like a few minutes.”

“It’ll slow the pace of the film,” Draco replied. “It’s not going in there.”

“Fine,” Harry muttered, throwing his hands in the air.

“The Boggart and the Skrewt can stay, but the Acromantula needs to go,” Draco said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

Harry muttered an expletive under his breath, shooting a glare at Draco.

“You’ll need to be on set for the Boggart, I suppose.”

“Why?” Harry asked.

“So that it’s accurate, why else?” Draco looked at him with exasperation.

“I doubt that my Boggart will be the same now as it was when I was fourteen,” Harry pointed out.

“Hmm,” Draco said, frowning to himself. “You may be right, but we can give it a go.”

“I’m not doing that,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I don’t want everyone on the set knowing what my Boggart is.”

“Blimey, _alright_ ,” Malfoy sighed dramatically. “The Boggart goes, then.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

The rest of the day didn’t fare much better, and Harry was ready to tear his hair out after a few more hours. It seemed that Draco was in a similar position.

“I don’t give a shit what bloody song played at the Yule Ball, Harry, nor do I care about Ron’s fight with Hermione. Your character is going to have a good time at that bloody ball, or so help me god.”

“But that’s not what _happened_ ,” Harry cried. “It was pretty crap and I didn’t do any proper dancing at all.”

“In the film you do,” Draco said. “I’m not budging, Harry. The audience doesn’t want to sit there watching you work your way through your teen angst in real time.”

“It’s not _teen angst_ ,” Harry cried, and Draco scoffed.

“It bloody well _is_. Now, unless you want me to spin it like you were properly moping that Hermione Granger went to the ball with somebody other than _you_ , you’ll sodding _drop it_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Harry said through gritted teeth.

“I think we’re done for the day,” Draco said, flopping back into his chair with a sigh.

“Good,” Harry said. He relaxed a little bit as he heard the words, his shoulders loosening from their previously tight position.

“I suppose you should be on set if we want to get all of the visual details right,” Draco sighed. He was rubbing at his temples, like the idea physically hurt him. “Be here at seven on Monday morning and I’ll have someone apparate you to the filming location.”

“And if I have something better to do?”

“Then I don’t give a shit. Be here or don’t, it’s your choice.”

*

It was fucking freezing in Scotland. Harry could have sworn that it hadn’t been so cold when he was going to school up there, but perhaps that had been something to do with his body being acclimatised to the northern temperatures. He’d gotten too used to London weather, and he was paying for it now.

“This way, Mr Potter,” the house elf said, gesturing for him to follow her towards one of the large tents that had been set up near the Lake. It looked gorgeous, actually. The calm surface of the water reflected a perfect image of the sky, the shapes of the clouds visible in extraordinary detail. Despite the chill there was very little wind, giving the whole area a very serene feel. Harry spared a moment to silently chide himself for not appreciating the natural beauty of the area when he’d been spending most of his time there whilst at Hogwarts. It far outweighed the loud and dirty London streets, to say the least.

Harry tore his eyes away from the surface of the Lake as he pushed open the flap of the large tent that had been set up nearby, stepping into the room. It was far warmer in there, and clearly a few atmospheric regulation charms had been cast on the inside, thank Merlin. Clearly Draco and Dave were fond enough of their actors and actresses that they didn’t want them to freeze into their seats. Harry was given only a moment to appreciate the abrupt change in temperature, before the whispering started.

“Oh my god, it’s Harry Potter,” a girl hissed off to Harry’s right. She was gripping the wrist of the woman who was doing her hair, who had paused in her work to stare at Harry.

“Alright, back to work, everyone,” Dave said as he appeared on Harry’s left. Thankfully everyone appeared to listen to him, and Harry felt the heavy weight of their gazes drop away. “Alright, Harry?”

“Alright,” Harry replied with a small nod.

“Draco said you’d be coming in today to help out with some of the details,” Dave said, gesturing for Harry to follow him through the tent.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“Cool. Just a heads up, you might want to cast a warming charm before we get out there. It’s a bit bloody freezing out by the Lake. Not as bad as being in it, mind you.”

“Wait, you’re actually getting _in_ the Lake?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows. He hoped they weren’t expecting him to do that as well. He wasn’t planning on going _that_ far to make sure the scene was accurate. Knowing the Draco of the past, he’d probably come up behind him and push him in.

“No other ways to get the scene shot, I’m afraid,” Dave shrugged. “Underwater filming’s a bit of a nightmare, but what can you do? Can’t claim to be using Gillyweed myself, though.”

Harry blinked in surprise. Merlin, the whole thing was still so very odd. He could be on set for this film for the rest of his life and he still didn’t think he’d be used to talking about bits of his life with other people like this, as though they were some abstract concept rather than his real life memories.

“Ah, Draco,” Dave called, waving his hand in the air. “Over here.”

“Morning,” Draco said, shooting both Harry and Dave a small smile. “Are we about ready to go?”

Harry didn’t hear Dave’s answer, because he was too busy staring at Draco. He fought back to urge to apparate home and completely change his clothes, but it was a close call. Harry had turned up to the set wearing a pair of his old loose jeans and a worn in Muggle hoodie, not wanting to dress up since it was so early in the bloody morning. He’d foolishly thought that everyone else would be thinking along the same lines whilst not in front of the camera, but he should have thought about it a bit more realistically. He supposed he should have expected nothing less than what he saw, given that the mere viewing of wizarding films was considered to be a complete affair, with formal dress usually being worn to each screening, whether it was the premiere or not. Harry didn’t subscribe to that particular social convention; why should he sit there in stuffy formal robes for an entire afternoon when he could be doing the same thing in his Cannons shirt and a pair of jeans that he was fairly sure had been Ron’s at some point?

Draco was a whole different beast that he should have seen coming. Since when had he ever known Draco Malfoy to be anything other than the best dressed person in the room, always looking immaculate and put-together, much to the chagrin of everyone around him? It had gotten somehow even more obvious since he’d found his career in film, judging by the constant _Prophet_ coverage. After becoming the biggest celebrity in the small world of wizarding films, he’d never been photographed looking anything but his absolute best. It was a quarter past seven on a Monday morning in rural fucking Scotland, and Draco looked like he’d just stepped off a runway, or taken a break from a bloody modelling shoot in Italy, or some other complete bollocks. It was god damn ridiculous, and Harry curled one of his arms around his middle in a subconscious gesture to hide himself a little from the blonde’s knowing gaze.

“Harry?” Dave said, nudging Harry’s side.

“Uh, sorry, what?” Harry said, tearing his gaze from Draco’s outfit.

Dave raised his eyebrows a little and smirked, but said nothing about where Harry had been looking. “I asked if you would be alright with heading to the Lake now.”

“Uh, yes, that’s fine,” Harry stammered. “Whatever works.”

“Great,” Dave said. “I’ll go round everyone up, we’ll meet out by the boats in ten.” He cast some sort of charm into the air as he walked away, the strands of magic spreading across the ceiling as they curled their way towards various cast and crew members, likely to alert them of the change of scenery.

“Honestly, Harry,” Draco said once Dave was out of earshot. “You could look like you didn’t just roll out of bed, you know.”

“But I _did_ just roll out of bed,” Harry replied, his cheeks darkening slightly from embarrassment. Didn’t Draco realise how bloody early it was?

“Um, right,” Draco said, seemingly taken off guard. His cheeks were also a little pink, though Harry wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like _Draco_ was the one who needed to be embarrassed about his outfit. “Shall we?”

“Sure,” Harry shrugged, and followed Draco deeper into the tent.

It was supremely odd seeing your Doppelganger standing in front of you, in Harry’s opinion. Even before Draco made some minor tweaks to the man’s appearance, he still looked identical to Harry. It was like looking into a charmed mirror. It was more than a little frightening that such a result could be achieved using only a simple glamour, no polyjuice necessary. The youth potion had indeed done the trick, and the actor looked disturbingly like Harry had at fourteen, though with shorter hair. Harry mentioned the length of the actor’s hair to Draco, who had waved him off, citing the lack of importance to the overall project that the length of his hair had.

“I don’t give a crap how long your bloody hair was, Harry, as long as it didn’t help you win the Tournament,” Draco said, raising an eyebrow in Harry’s direction. “So if you’re going to go ahead and tell me that you used your hair to make a bloody rope to help you climb out of the maze, then do it now.”

So Harry didn’t mention it anymore. He _did_ point out that Hermione hadn’t been the one he’d been tasked with saving down in the Lake. It had been written in that Ron was cheering him on from the stands, while Harry swam around trying to save Hermione, though Harry wasn’t sure why. It seemed like such an odd thing to change. He hoped that Draco wasn’t trying to spin his and Hermione’s friendship into some kind of misrepresented romantic intent. _That_ might make things a little awkward at the next Weasley family dinner.

“Hermione was Krum’s responsibility,” Harry insisted as the house elves rowed him and Draco across the Lake with a few of the lead actors. “Not mine. I had to save Ron.”

“I’m not spending time including a romantic subplot between Hermione and Krum,” Draco said. “Putting her there without explaining anything about it would just confuse everyone.”

“So explain it.”

“I’m not wasting screen time on that,” Draco insisted. “It’s completely unnecessary.”

Harry made a frustrated noise in his throat and turned away. It was far more infuriating than he would have anticipated having incorrect details in the movie about his life story.

“Did you bring the script with you?” Harry asked once they were firmly situated on the floating stands that would hold the cast and crew when they weren’t in the water.

“No,” Draco said, looking at Harry quizzically. “I’m here to direct, not to spend my time discussing inane changes to the script with you.”

“I thought that Dave was directing?”

“He is, but it’s a team effort,” Draco said. “He usually does the camera work, while I wrangle the actors. I just have no desire to freeze my bollocks off today.”

Harry couldn’t fault him for that one, he supposed.

“So, are you not acting in this film then?” Harry asked after a while of staring at gently rocking water of the Lake, watching Dave and a few of the actors swim around under its surface.

“No, I am,” Draco said, gazing out over the water.

“Oh,” Harry said, more than a little surprised. He wasn’t sure what would be more odd: Draco _not_ acting in one of his films, or Draco acting in a film about Harry’s life. “Who are you playing?”

“Myself,” Draco replied. “And my father.”

Harry’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Oh.”

“Did you expect something different?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry replied, truthfully. He supposed that it made sense that Draco was playing himself, even if it was a little odd. Playing his father was a little strange, though. Come to think about it, just the fact that Draco was playing two parts in the same film was extremely odd. “Wait, how are you going to be able to film some of the scenes if you’re playing both parts?”

“My father and I aren’t in a large number of scenes together,” Draco said. He still hadn’t looked at Harry, but his shoulders had tensed. “Mostly he’s in scenes with other Death Eaters. And when the two characters are indeed required to shoot together, a simple charm can be cast that will assist in editing the film. We use more than a few Muggle techniques in the editing process, though thankfully magic makes it far simpler to create everything. I don’t know how Muggles manage to make proper films without it.”

“Are there many scenes that you and your father are in together?” Harry asked. The question was more out of curiosity than suspicion, but Draco didn’t seem to think of it that way.

“Barely any, so you don’t have to worry about it. In fact, neither of us are onscreen an extreme amount, so you don’t need to be concerned.”

“I wasn’t concerned,” Harry said. “I don’t care if you are, I was just wondering.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Draco muttered, quietly enough that Harry had to strain to hear him.

Harry frowned, watching the way Draco’s body tensed even more, like he thought Harry was about to go and yell at him, or something. “I’m serious.”

“They’re coming up now,” Draco said, changing the subject.

Harry glanced over the railing to see that Dave had broken the surface with his large camera, along with the actors that played Harry and Hermione, as well as a young girl who Harry assumed was supposed to be Fleur’s younger sister. He watched as they swam towards the stands, Dave following behind them in the water. Harry turned towards Draco to ask a question regarding the other champions, but stopped short. When he turned his head Draco was watching him, his brows slightly furrowed. Harry raised his eyebrows questioningly and Draco turned away quickly, leaving Harry more than a little confused.

“Come on,” Draco said after a moment. “We should head down.”

“Wait, is that it?” Harry asked, glancing between Draco and the Lake.

“We’ve been filming for a few days already. That was the final shot that we needed,” Draco replied. “It doesn’t take us as long as it takes Muggles, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Oh,” Harry said. “Alright then.”

He followed Draco down the steps and to the bottom part of the stands. The actors that had been in the water must have cast drying charms on themselves, because they looked as if they’d never stepped foot in the Lake by the time Harry got down there.

“Harry, this is Mike and Lisa,” Dave said, nodding to two of the actors. “As I’m sure you can tell, they play you and Hermione.”

“Hi,” Harry said, giving them a small smile. Lisa beamed over at him, gripping tightly onto the towel that was wrapped around her shoulders. Mike looked more than a little star struck, his eyes going wide as he stared at Harry. Harry shuffled his feet in embarrassment, hating the awestruck way they looked at him. It seemed even more odd when one of the looks was coming from someone wearing his face.

Dave seemed to sense his discomfort, because he ushered the actors towards the waiting boat. “Once we get out of Hogwarts grounds, apparate back to the studio,” he said to the two actors. “We’ll run through few smaller scenes, so get moving.”

“You’re shooting more scenes today?” Harry asked.

“We try to get as much done in a day as we can,” Dave explained. His large video camera hovered in the air behind him, along with a few bags. The whole arsenal looked quite Muggle, now that Harry thought about it. “It took us far longer than usual to film the scenes out here because of the water. It’s been a right pain, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Wait, when is the film going to be finished?” Harry asked. At the rate they were going it didn’t seem like it would take more than –

“A few months, probably,” Dave said.

“You’re joking,” Harry said, his eyes wide. The script had looked massive when Draco had given it to him. There was no way they’d get that all done within a few months.

“It’s not a huge project, but it’s definitely not a small one. We finish filming scenes a whole lot faster than our Muggle counterparts do.”

“I’ll say,” Harry muttered.

“You’ll probably be siting with me for the rest of the day,” Dave said. He climbed into the boat and held his hand out to steady Harry as he followed him in. “Draco’s in the first scene we’re filming back at base, so he’ll be pretty busy today.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He wasn’t sure why Draco hadn’t mentioned that earlier, particularly since they’d been talking about how much Draco would be acting in the film. Draco must have had his reasons, but it didn’t stop Harry from feeling a little taken off guard about it.

*

“Oh, wow,” Harry muttered, spinning around on the spot.

“Pretty accurate, isn’t it?” Dave asked, laughing at Harry’s stunned expression.

Harry’s mouth dropped open as he gazed around at the replica of one of the courtyards at Hogwarts. If he hadn’t walked onto the set himself he would have thought that they were still on the grounds of the school, rather than in a large warehouse somewhere in the English countryside. Not a stone looked out of place, and each of the people, who Harry guessed were extras, looked exactly like Hogwarts students as they gathered around the courtyard in groups, waiting for Dave to start the scene. Draco was nowhere to be found, much to Harry’s confusion. He stepped back towards where Dave had set up a chair for him, next to one of the stands for his large camera. He’d explained on the way back across the Lake that he preferred not to have it hovering when he wasn’t using it, because too much magic could damage the Muggle parts of the camera. He only levitated it around when he was using it to film a scene.

“Everybody ready?” Dave called. He levitated the camera away from the stand as the actors called out affirmative responses. “Alright, action!”

Harry made sure to stay very quiet as he watched Dave follow the film version of himself down a hall and out into the courtyard. He felt his eyes widen as he watched as two of the extras shoved badges in the film-him’s face. He would bet his entire Gringotts account that the badges said ‘Potter Stinks’, and he felt an odd rush of anger and humiliation at the memory of that exact moment. He’d felt so bloody alone, fighting with Ron and being so stressed out about surviving the Tournament, that the badges had damn near pushed him over the edge. Draco had fought him hard about including his fight with Ron in the film, and had insisted on showing some tension between them, claiming that it showed “an accurate picture of your emotional state”. Harry didn’t like it, but Draco refused to budge. Speaking of, Harry still couldn’t find Draco. He was peering at a crowd of extras in one of the side halls when Draco’s voice broke through the faint din of the surrounding conversations.

“Why so tense, Potter?”

Harry’s head snapped up at the sound. His eyes locked on to Draco, who was sitting in the bow of one of the trees in the small courtyard. Harry’s breath caught in his throat as he watched Draco’s mouth move, spitting out insults in the direction of the actor playing Harry. Harry watched as the film versions of him and Draco squared up against each other. It was like looking into a Pensieve, only Harry couldn’t walk around and see the scene from a different angle. The sight of Draco’s face curled into that familiar sneer sent Harry’s blood racing a little faster, and he felt his fist clench against the fabric of his jeans.

He watched the scene play out, biting down on his lip as his gaze locked on to each of the actors. He was surprised when there was no sign of Alastor Moody when Draco drew his wand and sent a hex Harry’s way, hitting him square in the back. The film version of Harry sent one right back, though he looked as though his heart wasn’t in it. He rushed away as Draco laughed with his group of friends, all shooting sneers at Harry’s retreating back.

“Cut,” Dave called, sending a brief flash of red light out of the tip of his wand. “Great job, all.”

Harry frowned, glancing over at Draco who was decidedly still in human form. He walked across the courtyard as Draco broke away from the group of actors dressed in Slytherin robes, looking like he was making a beeline for Dave.

“Draco,” Harry called, jogging towards him.

Draco’s stopped at the sound of Harry’s voice and turned to face him. His teeth were worrying at his bottom lip, and his brows were drawn up slightly. “Yes?”

“Um, that was good,” Harry said, shuffling his feet. It felt odd to be talking to a fourteen year old version of Draco, and he felt quite unnerved by it.

Draco snorted and raised an eyebrow. “Well it’s not hard to be, considering I lived it.”

“Right,” Harry said. “Did you, though?”

“I’m not following.”

“You left out that part where Moody transfigured you.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Why not?” Harry asked.

“It’s illegal, for one,” Draco said. “It might cause some backlash if it was included. And I didn’t want my character to be given a reason to be sympathised with.”

“What?” Harry asked frowning. “What does that even mean?”

Draco shrugged. “Does it matter? You should probably go back to your chair, I assume Dave wants to redo the scene at least once more, and he won’t want you wandering into the shot.”

It didn’t get any less odd watching Harry’s fourteen year old self throw barbs back and forth with a younger version of Draco, and Draco’s portrayal of his younger self didn’t get any less confusing. Yes, he’d been downright cruel to Harry at times during the year, but Harry still felt it odd that Draco would write his character into the script that way. Harry had expected that Draco would at least omit some of the bullying from the film, if nothing more than to save face, but he’d been wrong.

Harry jogged up to Draco after the scene had been officially wrapped, standing in front of him to stop him in his tracks.

“Merlin, you caught me off guard,” Draco said, letting out a hollow laugh. “Yes?”

“Why are you making yourself look like such a shit?”

“In case you’d forgotten, I _was_ a shit back then.”

“But …” Harry said, trailing off. He wasn’t sure _why_ he had such an issue with how Draco was portraying himself, but it just felt _wrong_. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he knew that much.

“If it’s upsetting to you then you’ll be pleased to know that I’m barely written in again until our sixth year,” Draco said. He was fiddling with his damn sleeve again, looking so small in his Slytherin robes. “Anyway, my father’s in it more than I am.”

“Why?” Harry asked.

“It’s a story about you, not me,” Draco said. He looked up to meet Harry’s gaze, something unreadable in his eyes.

“But you were a part of that,” Harry insisted.

“And here I am,” Draco said, spreading his arms out from his sides slightly. “Honestly, Harry.”

Harry turned and walked away, not really sure what he was getting at.

“Alright?” Dave asked when he sat heavily back down in his chair.

Harry frowned as he watched Draco say something to the actor that played Harry, gesturing off to the side with his wand.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied.

*

He didn’t see much of Draco for the rest of the day, and he didn’t get his hands on the script once. He was beginning to wonder whether he should just go home and leave them all to it, when someone cleared their throat behind his right shoulder. Harry turned to see Draco standing there, dressed in his fancy dress robes rather than his Hogwarts ones. His face was back to its normal age, the youth potion evidently having worn off.

“My apologies that we didn’t discuss the script today,” Draco said. His chin was up and he was looking at Harry intensely, like he was steeling himself. Steeling himself against what, Harry wasn’t sure.

“It’s fine,” Harry said slowly.

“I thought that we could maybe meet somewhere tomorrow afternoon to go over it. I’ve been spending far too much time in my office as of late, so a change of scenery would be nice.”

“Uh, sure,” Harry said.

Some of the tension leaked out of Draco’s shoulders, though Harry had no idea why. Was he expecting that Harry would say no to advising on the film now that he’d seen the set?

“Is four alright?” Draco asked. When Harry nodded he continued with “we can meet at Nest off Diagon. I’ll organise a private space so that we won’t be overheard.”

“Alright,” Harry said.

“Brill,” Draco said, letting out a breath of air that Harry hadn’t known he’d been holding in. “I’ll see you there.”

“See you,” Harry said, before Draco turned and went strutting off across the set. He snorted to himself, shaking his head. Draco Malfoy was definitely an odd wizard.

*

“Sorry I’m late, I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Draco said. He rushed into the back room of the café in a swirl of well-fitting dress robes that looked like they cost more than the contents of Harry’s entire wardrobe.

“Not at all,” Harry said, though he had, a bit. He didn’t mind the half hour of peace and quiet, though. He didn’t get it often, what with the near constant press coverage, as well as his house apparently being the home base of his friend group. It was odd to have a day where nobody stopped by for a chat or a beer, so Harry had been content to sit there for a bit with only himself for company.

“One of the actresses threw a bit of a fit and I had to knock her down a peg,” Draco sighed, pulling off his scarf. “Honestly, how does an extra think they have the right to make creative decisions about a film? It’s bloody preposterous, is what it is.”

Harry mm’d and nodded along, sipping at his tea.

“Right, sorry again,” Draco said, finally sitting down. He pulled the script from inside of his robes and set it down on the table. “Have at it, then.”

Harry picked it up, flipping to the page marked with a small red circle, which was apparently where filming had reached.

“We haven’t done the Yule Ball yet,” Draco said as Harry read. “Hopefully we’ll get the scenes back in relative chronological order soon.”

“How are you differentiating between the years?” Harry asked as he flipped through the script, catching sight of a scene from his fifth year.

“We’re not, really,” Draco replied. “We’re leaving it a bit ambiguous so that it flows better. Otherwise we’ll end up wasting time on inane details that have no other purpose than to show the passage of time. There’s plenty more interesting things we could be filling that space with.”

“Uh, alright,” Harry said. “But is that really the best way to –“

“It’s the way we’re doing it,” Draco said, cutting him off. “Don’t try to argue about it, I’m not changing the whole bloody movie because you’ve decided that you’re the new director. Speaking of, you should start looking through that.” He nodded at the script and waved over a waitress.

Harry frowned as he looked at Draco’s tensed shoulders and clenched jaw. He’d barely said anything, so he wasn’t sure what had set Draco off.

“I’m sorry,” he said once the waitress had left. “I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“It’s fine,” Draco replied, sipping at his tea. “Well, it’s not, but it is.”

“Uh,” Harry said.

“Go on, have a read,” Draco said, sighing in exasperation.

Harry did, but he could feel Draco’s eyes on him as his eyes canvassed the pages. He looked up, but Draco looked away as soon as he did so. He grew used to the feeling of Draco’s gaze on him, and ended up just tuning it out. Draco had apparently made changes to the graveyard scene since his conversation with Harry, which was a pleasant surprise. Well, not pleasant exactly, considering the content of the scene, but pleasant in that Draco had actually listened to Harry for once. Harry wasn’t going to hold his breath for it to happen again, and if he’d thought that Draco accepting some of his critiques about inaccuracies in the script meant that Draco would be more likely to listen to him when he brought them up now, he was proven wrong.

“No.”

“But it’s _wrong_ ,” Harry cried, jabbing his finger at a passage which referred to an incident in a fourth year Defence Against the Dark Arts class.

“Sometimes you need to take artistic liberties,” Draco replied, sipping at his tea.

“Oh, is that what you’re calling it?” Harry shot back. “And I never won the duel with Voldemort, not really. The Priori Incantatem distracted him while I ran to the portkey.”

“While that’s all very heart-warming, I’m not changing that part.”

Harry threw his arms up, frowning at Draco. “I thought you wanted this to be accurate.”

“It’s one small detail. It doesn’t change the overall story.”

“It does,” Harry insisted. “If Voldemort hadn’t been distracted then he would have beaten me, I’m sure of it. At the very least, I wouldn’t have been able to escape.”

“Maybe so,” Draco shrugged. “But I’m still not changing it.”

Harry tore into his croissant roughly, biting down on the flaky pastry as he glared at Draco. Draco smirked at him in response, quirking an eyebrow.

“Are you coming tomorrow?” Draco asked conversationally, as if they hadn’t just been arguing.

“I suppose so,” Harry said. “I’ll need to if anything in this film is going to be accurate.”

Draco snorted into his teacup, apparently more amused than offended by Harry’s comment.

“We’ll be in the warehouse tomorrow,” Draco said. His eyes shined with something that looked like mirth as he watched Harry. “We’re filming the Yule Ball scene.”

“No romance between me and Parvati, are we clear?” Harry said.

Draco sipped at his tea and smiled sweetly at Harry over the rim of his cup.

*

“Bloody hell,” Harry muttered to himself as he watched a fourteen year old version of himself twirl the actress playing Parvati across the dance floor. The actress was gazing up at him with a look of wonder that made Harry want to gag. The real Parvati had certainly never looked at him like that, and he hoped that she wouldn’t take offence to her portrayal if she saw the film. Maybe she wouldn’t, since Harry was sure that Parvati would have much rather gone to the Ball with the Mike version of Harry rather than with Harry himself, since the actor was a far more enthusiastic dancer than the teenage version of Harry had been. Hell, Harry was still a pretty awful dancer over ten years later.

“Platonic enough for you?” Draco asked, making Harry jump.

“Fuck, how long have you been there?” he gasped.

“A while,” Draco said. “I’m not needed in this scene.”

“It’s alright,” Harry said, grimacing again at the stars in the actress’ eyes.

“She looks a bit off, doesn’t she?” Draco said, mostly to himself, Harry suspected. “One moment.”

Draco walked somewhere off to the side, and a few moments later Dave called cut on the scene. Harry watched as Draco walked onto the floor and said something to the actress. The girl giggled and Harry could see Draco snap something back at her, before he whirled around and came walking back towards Harry.

“Alright?” Harry asked as Dave called for the cast to resume their original places to begin the scene again.

“Come with me,” Draco said. His fingers curled around Harry’s wrist and he tugged him away from the set, off towards the long lines of shelves that filled the warehouse.

“Where are we going?” Harry asked.

Draco didn’t answer him, simply stopping and levitating a lamp down from one of the shelves, before transfiguring it into a table. He turned a book into a chair and gestured towards them. “Sit.”

Harry did, looking up at Draco with a raised eyebrow.

“You can’t be on set,” Draco said, as if that explained everything.

“Why?”

“You’re distracting the actors,” Draco said. He ran a hand through his hand before grimacing and attempting to smooth it back down.

“Sorry, what?”

“Exactly what I said. Half of them are forgetting to say their lines because they’re too busing staring at you, and the other half are too nervous to say them in front of you for fear of delivering them wrong. It’s bloody ridiculous,” Draco hissed, glaring at him like it was all Harry’s fault. “I’ve told them off for it already, but it’s still happening. We’ll never get this bloody film done if you’re here pottering around the set.”

Harry held his hands up with his palms facing out in placation.

“Stay here,” Draco said. He looked between the transfigured table and the door to the set that they had come out of, before dropping the script down in front of Harry. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Harry said, reaching for the stack of parchment. “I’m fine sitting here reading this.”

“But I’m not,” Draco replied, and Harry wasn’t even sure what that meant. Draco apparently didn’t care to elaborate because he walked off back towards the set, shooting Harry a look over his shoulder as he went.

“Odd,” Harry said to himself, before flipping the script open to a scene from his fifth year.

Draco did indeed come back a few minutes later. He hovered off to the side, watching as Harry scribbled away at the script he’d left with him. Harry refused to look up at him, waiting for Draco to announce his presence first. He was being weird, Harry thought. It wasn’t like Harry was about to run off with the script, or whatever Draco thought was going on. Any one of the ridiculous number of house elves moving about the place could stop him before he got to the door, and that was assuming that Harry even wanted to steal the bloody script in the first place. Why would he, it wasn’t like he’d gain anything from doing it. None of the major details would come as a surprise to him, considering the film was about _his_ bloody life. If he wanted to give a scoop to the _Prophet_ he’d only need to go and remind them about something he’d done in the past, and that likely wouldn’t be of any interest to them.

“Draco,” Harry sighed after a moment, glancing in Draco’s direction.

Draco walked forward casually, as if he hadn’t been standing there staring for a good five minutes like an absolute tosser.

“Transfigure yourself a chair if you’re going to hang around,” Harry said, setting the quill down.

“I was, uh, about to grab some lunch, actually,” Draco said.

Harry’s stomach rumbled loudly at the prospect of food, making Draco laugh.

“The house elves usually bring out the food around this time,” Draco said. “I was just coming to let you know.”

“Cool,” Harry said, closing the script.

“What did you think?” Draco asked. He sounded weirdly earnest, and Harry wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.

“I was reading the scenes from fifth year; they all sound pretty accurate,” Harry said.

“You can thank Zacharias Smith for that one,” Draco said, snorting sarcastically. “I don’t suppose you’ve read his book, have you?”

Harry hadn’t, but Hermione certainly had. She’d ranted for a good hour after finishing it about privacy, and how he should have had them all sign waivers before publishing the thing. Harry hadn’t really seen what all the fuss was about, but he’d mm’d and ah’d in all the right places, which had apparently placated her enough to send her back in Ron’s direction.

“You know, it would be far easier for everyone if someone close to you had blabbed and written a tell-all book sometime since the war. You’re making my work quite difficult, Harry,” Draco said. He reached out to take the script from Harry, tucking it inside of his robes.

“Sorry,” Harry said, shooting Draco a toothy smile. “Maybe I’ll write one myself someday.”

And maybe he should, to set the record straight, if nothing else. He could finally put out a piece of himself to the world that was entirely _him_ , without anyone else’s input. Well, except for Ron and Hermione, of course. They’d probably have to help him write it, if he ever did decide to do it. Maybe he would, in another ten years’ time, when the war would be nothing but a distant memory.

“Everyone usually eats together through there, but I understand if you’d rather go somewhere more private,” Draco was saying, gesturing to a long table that was brimming with food. The cast and crew were starting to make their way towards the area, their voices getting louder as they drew closer.

“Here’s fine,” Harry said, shrugging. He moved towards the table and started piling his plate high. He hadn’t seen a feast on this scale since Hogwarts, and it sent a swell of nostalgia through him. If he closed his eyes he could almost smell the wax from the candles overhead and hear the sounds of Ron and Hermione laughing next to him as they joked around with their friends.

He walked to the end of the long bench where Draco was sitting with a cup of tea, brought to him by one of the house elves.

“Thank you, Minky,” Draco said, inclining his head in thanks.

“So,” Harry said, sitting opposite Draco on the bench. “How did you get into filmmaking?”

Draco glanced him with wide eyes, like he was surprised that Harry was choosing to sit with him and talk to him. Harry quirked an eyebrow at him, and Draco composed himself.

“Dave’s fiancé is Muggleborn and quite the film buff, so she made it her mission to educate me on the subject of Muggle films. Turns out I liked them all a fair bit,” Draco said.

“So you just decided to make some wizarding ones?” Harry pressed.

“I suppose. Dave fashioned himself into a bit of a filmmaker, and asked me to act in one of them. I liked it, so we kept doing it. He’s far better at directing than me, so he tends to stick to that.”

“But you prefer acting?” Harry said. “And writing, of course.”

“Yes,” Draco said. “It’s relaxing, I suppose, pretending to be someone else for a while.”

“I can imagine,” Harry said.

“Hey,” Draco said, putting down his teacup. “Do you think you would you want to grab a drink with me after filming wraps today?”

“Sure,” Harry shrugged after a moment, picking up his glass of pumpkin juice. A couple of drinks wouldn’t hurt. It might make Draco easier to work with if Harry got to know him a bit better, actually.

“Great,” Draco said, and he smiled widely, before turning back to his plate.

Harry wasn’t so sure why Draco would be so obviously excited by the idea of grabbing a drink with Harry, but apparently he was. Harry supposed that they were sort-of-maybe friends now, though he wasn’t completely sure. It was certainly debatable. Draco still made him want to tear his hair out when they discussed changes to the film’s script, but he didn’t always want to throttle Draco when they were talking about other things. Not that they talked about other things all too often. Hardly ever, really, but that might be about to change. Harry found that he might actually be a little excited himself about it, actually. Perhaps Draco was onto something.

Harry could feel Draco’s eyes on him as he ate his lunch, but he let it go. If Draco wanted to be weird and stare at Harry than that was his prerogative. Harry didn’t particularly care either way; he was used to it. Besides, it was Draco staring, so it didn’t feel as intrusive as it did when the members of the film’s cast and crew did the same thing. Perhaps it was because Draco was also a celebrity, and thus knew what it felt like to be scrutinised, and perhaps didn’t mean it in the same way as others often did. Perhaps it was because they’d known each other for so long now, or even because they’d managed to cultivate a semi-professional working relationship. Most likely it was because Harry often found that his eyes were drawn to Draco if the other man was around, and he couldn’t exactly fault Draco for doing what he so often did.

*

They didn’t go to the Leaky after filming wrapped that day, as Harry had expected they would. It was the place everyone usually went when they were after a pint or a glass of Firewhiskey, after all. Harry said as much, which garnered a look from Draco which practically printed the words ‘are you an idiot?’ on Draco’s forehead. It then occurred to Harry that that was probably precisely _why_ Draco didn’t want to go there. His celebrity status rivalled Harry’s own these days, except people were far more used to seeing Harry out and about Diagon Alley on a daily basis, so he wasn’t so much of a rare occurrence anymore. Draco, on the other hand, was far more untouchable than Harry, and thus was also far more mysterious. He’d probably get mobbed if they went somewhere like the Leaky, and it wouldn’t take reporters long to descend on the bar in an attempt to get the latest scoop on whatever project Draco was involved in. They at least tended to leave Harry alone a bit nowadays, though that might have something to do with them choosing to go after Draco instead.

“Here we are,” Draco said, pushing open the door to the bar. It looked dinky as all hell from the outside, but Harry was pleasantly surprised to find that the questionable looks were indeed deceptive. The bar was lit by rows of blue and purple lights along the edges of the room, with tables and booths scattered about, barely visible in the low lighting. It was just the kind of place one would go if they didn’t want to be immediately bothered.

Draco led Harry towards the bar and said something to the bartender, who waved them towards a booth against the wall on the right side of the room. A tiny vase of glowing green flowers cast a dim light on the table, and Harry found himself reaching forward to feel the waxy coloured petals against the skin of his fingertips.

“This alright?” Draco asked after a moment, sliding into the small booth opposite Harry.

“Brilliant,” Harry said, unable to hold in his smile. Draco smiled back, a small one that Harry almost didn’t catch. It looked nice on the usually hard planes of his face. Harry wasn’t sure why he was thinking about what Draco’s bloody smile looked like, but he wasn’t about to question it.

The bartender came over almost immediately, bringing over a large glass of Firewhiskey and something that looked like milk with an artificial cherry in it.

“Uh,” Harry said, glancing at the drink that was placed in front of Malfoy. “What is that?”

“A shivering snowman,” Draco said. “Want a taste?”

“No thanks,” Harry said, scrunching up his nose. Did that thing have _powder_ on the top? Well it definitely looked like a cup of half melted snow, if that’s what it had been going for. He picked up the glass of Firewhiskey and took a sip, before stopping and glancing at Draco, his eyes widening.

“What?”

“What are you trying to get me to agree to here?” Harry asked, putting the Firewhiskey down and narrowing his eyes.

“Sorry?” Draco looked confused.

“You’re plying me with Firewhiskey to get me to agree to something being in the film, aren’t you?” Harry had him now.

“No?” Draco asked. He snorted at Harry, glancing at him over the rim of his glass. “That’s definitely not what I’m after right now, believe me.”

“Well good, because I’m onto you,” Harry said. He took another sip of Firewhiskey, because one more couldn’t hurt. He could keep his wits about him after a few mouthfuls, after all.

“Sure thing, Harry,” Draco said. The dim light made his face look soft, smoothing out all the hard planes and angles as he watched Harry take a drink.

Harry glanced down at the glass of Firewhiskey in front of him and decided to throw caution to the wind. He picked it up and took a few mouthfuls, shrugging internally as he did so. What more could he really get into, after all? He’d already signed away the rights to a movie about his life, and it couldn’t get much more dramatic than that. Besides, he found that – despite Draco’s infuriating tendency to not budge on select details about the film’s script – Harry did trust him to do his best. Draco omitting the deaths of his parents and Cedric from the screen meant quite a lot to Harry, and went fairly far in building Harry’s trust in Draco. Despite Draco’s occasional loosening of the truth when it came to some of the smaller details, he was out to paint a truthful picture of Harry’s arguably more turbulent years. And he was doing a good job of it, from what Harry could see.

Draco was watching him again, as Harry lost himself in thought, Harry could feel his eyes on him.

“You’re always staring,” Harry said matter-of-factly. His eyes flicked up to meet Draco’s. Despite the lack of light, Harry could tell that Draco’s cheeks had turned red. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” Draco said, clearing his throat. “I was just –“

“Oh,” Harry said. He sat up a little straighter and pointed a finger at Draco, smiling widely. “You’re making sure that your character looks right, aren’t you?”

“Uh,” Draco said.

“Ha!” Harry said, snapping his fingers. “I knew there was something.”

Draco looked mildly shocked for a moment, before his face melted into amusement. His glass dangled loosely from his fingers as he appraised Harry from across the table.

“Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not,” Draco said cryptically. “Speaking of characters, you can’t come back to the set tomorrow. I was serious earlier, none of the cast can concentrate when you’re around.”

“Ugh,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

“It really bothers you, doesn’t it?” Draco asked, leaning forwards. “When people pay too much attention to you.”

“A bit,” Harry shrugged. “But that’s not hard to guess.”

“No, it’s not,” Draco agreed. “Though it’s a little surprising, given how long you’ve lived in the limelight.”

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“No, you didn’t,” Draco agreed, sipping at his white drink. “Did you want another?” He nodded towards Harry’s empty glass.

Harry shrugged and nodded, sighing to himself.

“Anything that I agree to from now on doesn’t count,” Harry said as the bartender placed a new glass of Firewhiskey in front of him. “I mean it.”

“Uh huh,” Draco snorted.

“I’m not joking. I make terrible judgement calls after a few glasses of Firewhiskey.”

“Oh?” Draco looked far too interested now, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Harry said. “In fact, why don’t we talk about you? That way there’ll be less opportunities for me to completely derail myself.”

“Right,” Draco snorted. “What in particular did you want to discuss?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. He lifted the glass of Firewhiskey up to his eye level and watched as a bead of water ran down the side of the glass. “Tell me more about Australia.”

“Oh,” Draco said, clearly surprised. “Uh, I went over there after the war and met Dave.”

“And?” Harry said, putting down his glass. “That’s hardly a proper response.”

Draco just looked at Harry for a moment before lifting his glass to his lips, not breaking eye contact. Harry didn’t break the gaze either, lifting his eyebrows in challenge.

“Fine,” Draco said after a moment, the ghost of a smirk on his lips. “I wanted to get away, and Australia seemed like as good a place as any. I went over there and met Dave in a wizarding bar one day. He’s far more persistent than anyone gives him credit for, and he wore me down after a good few hours of trying, Merlin knows why. He’s been a good friend to me over the past few years.”

“I’m glad,” Harry said, smiling softly. And he _was_ glad that Draco had had someone to turn to in what was likely one of the hardest times in his life. “And then you started making films together?”

“Yes,” Draco nodded.

“But you made some with other people as well, didn’t you?” Harry asked. “The film about the Founders wasn’t directed by Dave.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Draco looked interested again, and Harry realised that he’d just let it slip that he’d definitely seen Draco’s prior works. Hell, that he knew them well enough to be able to identify that the director who had worked with Draco on one film was different to the one he was currently working with. “Dave went back to Australia to spend some time with his fiancé, so I worked with some other people for a while. Tell me, Harry,” he leaned forward, clasping his hands together. He looked far too devious for Harry’s liking. “Did you like that film?”

“Yes,” Harry replied. He swallowed heavily, feeling like the air was getting stuck in his chest. There was something in Draco’s eyes that he couldn’t identify, but it made him feel a little trapped. The thing was, he wasn’t so sure that he disliked it at all. “I did.”

“There were some fairly risqué parts in that, you know,” Draco said, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh god,” Harry muttered, snorting into his hands, because Draco was _right_. There was one particular scene in the movie about the founders of Hogwarts that showed Draco completely naked from behind, among other things, and Harry had completely forgotten about it until Draco had brought it up. Merlin, he couldn’t have admitted to knowing literally _any other_ of Draco’s films, could he? He had to pick the most bloody embarrassing one there was. There weren’t any sex scenes in _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ , why couldn’t he have mentioned that one instead?

“Calm down,” Draco laughed, his eyes shining with mirth. “It’s not like I didn’t know that people would see it.”

“Still,” Harry said, taking a sip of Firewhiskey in an attempt to control the hysterical laughter that was trying to force its way out of his throat.

“Did you think I looked good, Harry?” Draco asked, because he was apparently feeling particularly sadistic.

Harry burst into hysterical giggles, unable to stop himself. “ _Stop_ , Draco,” he cried, waving his hand in Draco’s direction. “Merlin, don’t bring up your bare arse while we’re at the table.”

Draco choked on his drink, his eyes wide as he glanced at Harry.

“Don’t pretend to be innocent, you bloody well started it,” Harry said, finishing off his Firewhiskey.

“Better go easy on those if you don’t want to start agreeing to things,” Draco said. His made his voice go all high pitched on the last three words, doing a ridiculously over-the-top rendition of Harry’s voice.

“Shut up,” Harry laughed, snatching Draco’s drink up and taking a sip. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d been expecting, and he told Draco as much.

“Well I _do_ have good taste,” Draco said, his voice sounding all posh.

“In clothes, yes. Everything else remains to be seen.”

“Oi, come off it,” Draco cried, all traces of poshness melting away.

“It was a compliment!”

“It bloody well wasn’t,” Draco said, narrowing his eyes. His lips kept twitching upward in a smile, his frown deepening as he tried to control his expression.

“I said you had good taste in clothes. That’s a compliment.”

“That’s because I dress well. That’s not a compliment, that’s simply stating a fact.”

“You’re a knob,” Harry said, flicking a bit of condensation from the side of his empty glass at Draco.

“And you’re a tosser,” Draco shot back, gesturing for the bartender to come over to their table.

It was nice, Harry decided, having a drink with Draco Malfoy. Harry wasn’t sure how their conversations had transformed from biting words about script changes to friendly banter in a pub after a long day, but he was quite glad that they had, all things considered.

“Look,” Draco said once the bartender had moved away. “You really can’t come on set tomorrow.”

“Ok,” Harry sighed. “What do we do about the script then?” The whole fifty feet security rule was really throwing a spell in the works.

“I have an idea,” Draco said. “You can say no, but it’s probably our best option.”

“Alright,” Harry said slowly. He could literally feel his judgement slipping away as he spoke. Merlin, he’d _told_ Draco not to let him agree to anything.

“Since you can’t come to the set anymore and the script can’t leave my immediate vicinity, I thought we could come up with an alternative solution. A few times a week, after filming wraps for the day – if you’re not busy, of course – you could come round to mine to read the script. I could leave you alone to do it, if that’s what you wanted, but it might be our best bet. That way I can use my Pensieve to show you what the sets for the next few days will look like, and you can tell me if anything needs to be changed. How does that sound?”

“Brilliant,” Harry’s mouth said long before his brain could catch up.

“Yeah?” Draco was smiling now, his white teeth visible in the dim lighting.

“Yeah,” Harry shrugged. “Sounds good.”

*

And that was precisely the circumstances that led to Harry standing in front of Draco Malfoy’s London flat that following Tuesday night. It was probably a terrible idea that Harry had agreed to come. Though it _seemed_ like an alright idea, was it really? Harry had no clue. He really shouldn’t be allowed to make his own decisions from that point onwards; it never led to anything good.

He steeled himself and rang Draco’s doorbell. Draco opened the door mere seconds after Harry had announced his presence, looking mildly flustered.

“Were you waiting there?” Harry asked, narrowing his eyes.

“No,” Draco said, too quickly.

Harry shrugged and stepped through Draco’s doorway, Draco moving aside to let him through.

“I’d ask to take your coat, but I should have expected that you’d come without one,” Draco said teasingly, his eyes dragging down Harry’s body as he blatantly judged his outfit.

“Sod off,” Harry laughed, tugging at the strings on the front of his hoodie. “Why would I even bother when I already know that you’re going to dress better than me?”

Draco narrowed his eyes, but apparently decided to take the compliment and run with it. He turned to walk down the hallway, gesturing for Harry to follow him.

“Wow,” Harry said once they walked through a doorway and stepped into Draco’s lounge room. Harry had never fashioned himself as much of an interior designer – Hermione had actually bought most of his furniture for him – but even he could tell that the lounge was impeccably furnished. Each bit of the room seemed to fit together seamlessly, and the soft colours on the furniture and the walls played off each other nicely. Harry was pretty sure that there wasn’t a single room in his house where everything matched, let alone looked this good.

“I thought you could set up shop in here,” Draco said. He’d laid the script out on the glass coffee table, open to the last page that Harry had been reading. “You’re ahead of the filming schedule now, so that should make changing details far easier, if need be.”

“Cool,” Harry said. His eyes dropped to the floor when Draco met his gaze, and he abruptly noticed how out of place his scruffy trainers looked in the impeccably neat room.

“Are you a fan of lasagne?” Draco called, his voice now sounding much farther away.

“Sure,” Harry said, sitting down on the couch and pulling the script towards him.

“Good, because I accidentally made too much for just myself.”

Harry was extremely thankful for Draco’s portion mistake because he’d barely eaten dinner earlier, too nervous about coming to meet Draco on his home turf. He needn’t have worried, because things were exactly the same as they were on set. Hell, Draco seemed to be acting even more civil than he usually did, which went a long way to putting Harry at ease. Not that Draco had been uncivil the last time Harry had seen him, but it was still a pleasant surprise. Harry really quite liked the new adult version of Draco that he’d been spending time with recently. Well, once one got past the stubbornness and sarcasm, at least.

“When you’ve got a free moment, I put the memory of tomorrow’s set in the Pensieve under the window for you to take a look at,” Draco called from the kitchen.

Harry put down the script and walked over, deciding to get that part out of the way first. It was an odd place to keep a Pensieve, under the window in one’s living room. Harry supposed that Draco could have moved it from wherever it had originally been located because he didn’t want Harry tramping around through his house, but the Pensieve looked as though it had been built into the spot where it sat.

There was a memory swirling around in the pool, and Harry dived straight into it. The memory cleared to reveal a rolling hill with a decaying house atop it, the light so dim that it was a little hard to see. Harry immediately recognised the location. He glanced around, half expecting Voldemort or Peter Pettigrew to come slinking out of the shadows. It was an unnerving thought, and he wrapped his arms around himself in a small gesture of comfort. At the sound of the wind gusting over the land – likely a spell effect that Draco had put in place – Harry whirled around and saw the lines of gravestones, stretching forwards down the hill a short ways. His eyes locked onto the large cauldron in front of the grave that he knew was a dead ringer for the one belonging to Voldemort’s Muggle father. His stomach twisted with nausea at the sight of the graveyard, and he briefly wondered if Draco had actually gone there to take a memory from it, given how realistic it looked. Harry didn’t bother walking around, figuring that if it was a close enough depiction of the real Little Hangleton to send goose bumps up his spine, than it was good enough to be used in the film.

As he pulled himself out of the memory he spared a thought for Draco, and how he was likely going to be donning a Death Eater costume soon. He expected that it wouldn’t be easy for him, and wondered how he was feeling about doing it. Draco had seemed ashamed enough simply mentioning his father outside of the context of his film character, so Harry had no idea how he was going to go about pulling on a Death Eater garb. To be honest, he was a little surprised that Draco had even agreed to do it in the first place.

Draco was watching him as he pulled himself from the Pensive, taking in a deep breath of air as he did so.

“Was it alright?” Draco asked. He seemed like he was holding something back, like he was forcing himself to appear passive and reserved. Harry wasn’t sure how he could tell, but he definitely could. Something to do with the set of Draco’s shoulders, perhaps.

“It looked realistic,” Harry said, not wanting to think about the place any longer. It wasn’t like he had fond memories of the things that had happened there, or anything of the sort.

“I went there, when I was doing research for the script,” Draco explained. His hand dropped down to fiddle with the sleeve on his shirt, and Harry itched to slap it away. “It was an awful place, to say the least.”

That explained why it had looked so close to the real thing, then. Harry shuddered at the thought of going back there, not sure how Draco had managed it. The whole placed reeked of anger and despair, like nothing good had ever happened there.

“Are you going to be alright?” Harry asked after a moment of silence.

“What do you mean?” Draco asked, frowning. His hand paused on his sleeve, and Harry’s eyes locked onto it.

“You’re going to be playing your father soon, aren’t you?” Harry asked.

“I’m going to be playing my father for most of the rest of the film, Harry,” Draco said. His voice sounded matter-of-fact, but there was an undercurrent of emotion there that Harry managed to catch.

Harry decided to let it go, sending a comforting smile Draco’s way. After a moment Draco returned it, and his hand dropped away from his sleeve.

“Come on then,” he said, waving Harry into the kitchen.

Harry’s eyebrows practically hit his hairline when he saw the meal laid out on Draco’s kitchen table. He turned towards Draco, getting a guilty smile in return.

“You did not _accidentally_ make too much,” Harry said, eyes turning back to the table.

“Technically I did make too much for one person to eat, yes,” Draco replied. “Anything else, you needn’t concern yourself with.”

The two plates on the table were piled high with large slices of lasagne, stacks of roast vegetables, and some kind of salad. There were flowers in the centre of the table in a delicate looking glass vase, and a radio played softly in the corner of the room. Draco picked up a bottle of wine from the table and held it up to Harry, gesturing towards one of the empty wine glasses in question.

“Um,” Harry said. “Do you eat like this every night?”

“Maybe,” Draco shrugged. “Maybe not. Wine?”

“Please.”

And perhaps Draco _did_ eat like that every night. He wasn’t the kind of person to ever do something by halves, and he certainly enjoyed a bit of extravagance more than the average witch or wizard, so it wasn’t all too farfetched an idea.

Harry shrugged to himself and sat down, taking his newly filled wine glass from Draco.

“So, how’s filming going?” Harry asked after a moment, glancing up at Draco.

“Alright,” Draco shrugged. “It always goes slower at the start, before everyone really gets into their groove. Your fifth and sixth years are going to kind of meld into one, so that will make things move a bit faster.”

Harry nodded, taking a bite of lasagne. His eyes widened and he groaned as the flavour touched his tongue. That confirmed it; he’d definitely been eating too many takeaways over the past few weeks. The taste of home cooked food was just about enough to send him over the edge.

Harry’s gaze focused back on Draco when he cleared his throat. His cheeks were bright red and he was avoiding looking at Harry, which was a little odd.

“Oh god, did I just spill something everywhere?” Harry asked. He glanced down and confirmed that he looked completely clean, which meant that Draco was being weird for no reason again. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” Draco replied, his voice sounding slightly squeaky. “Um, do you like it?”

“It’s brilliant,” Harry sighed, groaning around his next mouthful. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

Draco’s mouth was open as he stared at Harry, a high flush on his cheeks. He snapped his mouth shut after a moment, swallowing heavily. His voice was low when he finally spoke. “You sound absolutely pornographic, you know that, right?”

Harry choked on his mouthful of lasagne, his eyes flying open from their closed position. “ _No_ ,” he cried, glancing at Draco. “Fuck, sorry. That was probably really weird.”

“Um,” Draco said, watching him with a slight furrow between his brows.

“Right, back to the movie,” Harry said, scrambling for a topic that didn’t touch on his undoubtedly sexual sounding moans. Merlin, how embarrassing. Draco had made him dinner, and he’d just sat at the table groaning like an utter moron.

“The movie,” Draco repeated, sounding confused.

“Yes. Uh, what are you most looking forward to shooting?” Harry asked quickly, taking a hearty sip of wine.

“Um, I’m not really sure, to be honest.” Draco sounded like he was coming back to himself, which was good. Draco concentrating on Harry’s question meant that he wasn’t thinking about Harry’s supremely embarrassing display. “I enjoyed writing the bits about you and your friends going into hiding during our seventh year, but there’s still a lot of gaps that need to be filled in there.”

“Well, I’m here to help,” Harry said, before stopping short. “Wait, uh, that might be a bit of a problem.”

“Oh?” Draco asked.

“There’s some stuff that happened around that time that I’m not sure should be in the movie.”

“If this is going to be about yet another assumed romance…” Draco said, raising his eyebrows in exasperation.

“It’s not. It’s about Voldemort, but I’m not certain that I should say anything.”

Draco watched him for a moment, studying his features. “You’re talking about the Horcruxes, right?”

Harry’s jaw dropped open as he stared across the table at Draco, not quite able to believe what he was hearing.

“ _You_ know about the Horcruxes?”

“I’m not completely daft, you know,” Draco replied, linking his fingers on the tabletop. “I was second in our year for marks.”

“That gives me no information.”

“I put two and two together,” Draco said.

“You _put two and two together_?” Harry cried, his eyes going wide. “And you came to the solution of _Horcruxes_?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously, I’m going to need a more thorough explanation,” Harry said. He put his fork down, fully focused on Draco.

“It’s not that hard to believe that I came to the correct conclusion,” Draco said, raising his eyebrows. “There was always talk in my father’s circles that _He_ would return, and I heard things. They would speculate, though I didn’t pay much attention until I was older. By then I was curious and knew that the snake-faced bint had somehow managed to make himself practically immortal, and he’d used dark magic to do it. I decided to look into it.”

“And you just happened to read about Horcruxes.”

“You do remember what my family name is, right?” Draco said. “There was a whole library filled with books on dark magic that connected to my father’s study, all I had to do was find the right one. Merlin, Harry, my family owns the largest private collection in England of books on dark magic. I was probably in a better position to figure it out than anybody. It’s quite simple, if you know what you’re looking for.”

“Right,” Harry said, still not quite able to process what he was hearing. “Right.”

“Right,” Draco said, nodding. “And I’m not planning on describing it in detail in the film, if that’s what you’re worried about. The wizarding public don’t particularly need to know the ins and outs of certain dark magic rituals, in my opinion. Better to leave that one out of it. I was thinking of going with objects containing dark magic that needed to be destroyed for an ambiguous reason. Is that agreeable to you?”

Harry blinked at Draco. “Maybe?”

“Well, that’s what’s happening,” Draco said, taking a sip from his wine glass. “Eat your dinner, Harry.”

Harry did, taking another bite of the stupidly wonderful lasagne.

“How many objects were there, in the end?” Draco asked after a good few minutes of small talk.

“How many do you know about?” Harry asked, genuinely interested.

“The snake, definitely,” Draco said. “He always kept that awful thing on a tight leash. My father mentioned something about a diary at some point, but I was never certain on that one.”

“Those were both Horcruxes, yes,” Harry said. “There were five more.”

“Merlin, no wonder the man was absolutely mental,” Draco said, his eyes going wide. “Well we definitely won’t have the time to put them all in, so you can pick the most interesting ones, if you like.”

“Interesting?” Harry echoed.

“The ones that will make for the best story,” Draco clarified. “That or you can just tell me about all of them and I’ll take my pick.”

“They were all important,” Harry said, frowning to himself.

“My apologies, I didn’t intend for it to sound like they weren’t.”

“Um, it’s fine,” Harry said. “I don’t really know which ones would fit best.”

“Tell me about them then,” Draco said, and for some reason Harry did just that.

Once the stories of the Horcruxes started to fall from his lips he couldn’t stop them, spilling every little detail about the hunt for them and how each of them had nearly gotten he and his friends killed along the way. Draco’s face went white when Harry described how he’d just found Ravenclaw’s diadem in the Room of Requirement when he’d been interrupted by Draco during the final battle, and he swayed slightly in his chair.

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly, and Harry imagined that he was thinking about how quickly the tide of the war could have turned if he’d somehow managed to take Harry in, stopping him from destroying the Horcrux and rendering Voldemort mortal. “I’m sorry.”

Harry didn’t know what to say to that, so he pressed on. After a brief internal battle he decided not to tell Draco that he had been the final Horcrux, preferring to keep that particular detail to himself. It was something that he had no interest in the public knowing about, and – though he did trust Draco – it wasn’t worth the risk at that point. If Draco noticed that something was off about the numbers then Harry would just say that he must have remembered wrong.

“Alright,” Draco said, thinking out loud. “Well, the diary’s out, since that happened so early on. Possibly the fake locket, too. That will just confuse the audience, if we have two storylines of you searching for the same thing. It doesn’t change the outcome of that year, either.”

“Doesn’t it?” Harry asked, a little confused.

“Dumbledore would have died either way,” Draco said. He swallowed heavily, his eyes dropping to the table. Harry saw his hand come up to fiddle with his sleeve again. “So we can probably cut the ring out, too, since it wasn’t you who destroyed it.”

“So you’re keeping the snake, the cup, the true locket, and the diadem?”

“Maybe not the diadem,” Draco said, frowning to himself. “That might be a little … much. I wasn’t planning on including our meeting in the Room of Requirement in the final script anyway.”

“Why?” Harry asked. “I’m not necessarily objecting, but why choose to cut it?”

“To be completely honest with you, Harry, I don’t want to act it out,” Draco replied. He turned his gaze towards Harry, his eyes intense and stormy. “I’m fine with playing my father and acting out all of the terrible things that he did, but I don’t want to do that. Not with what happened in there, in the end.”

“Alright,” Harry said.

Draco looked incredulous. “ _Alright_? Aren’t you going to tell me that I’m an idiot for drawing my line in the sand _there_ , or say that it won’t be truthful, or something?”

“No,” Harry said. “You don’t want to do it, so don’t. It’s your script.”

After a moment Draco nodded to himself, straightening his shoulders. “You’re right, it is.”

The conversation drifted to much safer topics after that, though Harry wasn’t quite able to get over the shock that he’d received after hearing that Draco had figured out that Voldemort had made Horcruxes before his death.

They sat in companionable silence later on as Harry read through the script, aside from the small bites of conversation when Harry would suggest a change in detail, and Draco would inform him that it wasn’t something large enough for him to concern himself with. It might have sounded biting if anyone else had said it, but something in Draco’s eyes made Harry think that it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what the look Draco kept giving him was, but everything seemed to be going fine. That was all that mattered, after all.

*

“What’s your favourite dessert?” Draco asked the next day, sticking his head around the doorway between his kitchen and lounge. “I have some extra ingredients lying around, so I thought I might make something.”

“You don’t have to,” Harry said, more to be polite than anything else.

“You’d be doing me a favour.”

“Does that mean I can get a favour in return?” Harry asked, far more interested now.

“That depends on what it is,” Draco said. “There’s a few things that I wouldn’t mind trading for.”

Harry tapped his quill against his lip as he thought, turning over possibilities in his mind. “Can I cash it in at a later date?”

“If you want,” Draco shrugged. “Still depends on what it is, though.”

“Then I guess you’ll find out later,” Harry said, wiggling his eyebrows. “My favourite dessert is treacle tart.”

“Treacle tart? Really?”

Harry wasn’t sure what was so surprising about that. Treacle tart was a perfectly good dessert. He told Draco this, who snorted and rolled his eyes.

“It’s a perfectly fine dessert, Harry. I was just expecting you to say something a little more interesting.”

“Treacle tart is interesting,” Harry cried. “What’s your favourite bloody dessert then?”

“Brownies,” Draco shrugged. “There’s a café in southern France that makes lovely ones with raspberry and caramel in them. They’re to die for.”

“Huh,” Harry said, because that did indeed sound more interesting. Surprisingly, Draco didn’t stay to gloat, instead he disappeared back into the kitchen. There was a whirring sound, so Harry suspected that Draco had started making the tart. He wasn’t sure how Draco had the proper ingredients for it, since he apparently hadn’t been expecting Harry to answer his question with that, but whatever.

The tart was good, Harry discovered a few hours later. He groaned as he licked it off the spoon, reaching forward for another piece as Draco sat watching him from the chair opposite.

“Tell me about the Department of Mysteries,” Draco said after a moment, his voice sounding a little strained.

“It’s a big dark room with lots of white balls. Fuck, this is good.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Draco said, clearing his throat. “I know you’re way past there in the script, so is it accurate?”

“Mm.”

“ _Harry_ ,” Draco cried, frowning. “Focus, for Merlin’s sake.”

“Uh, sorry,” Harry said, putting the spoon down. “It’s alright, but a bit off. The bit about the Death Eaters chasing us through the room was right, but your father only had the prophecy for a few minutes. Then the Order came and helped us all out.”

“Alright,” Draco said. “I suppose that’s easy enough to work around.”

“Are you going to be … you know, alright?” Harry asked, sneaking a sideways glance at Draco. Draco raised a questioning eyebrow in response. “Playing a Death Eater?”

“Harry –” Draco sighed.

“And don’t give me that ‘I _was_ a Death Eater crap’. And even if you were, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be hard for you to go back and play one.”

“I’ll be fine,” Draco said. His jaw was clenched, but his voice was soft somehow. Perhaps rather than becoming angered at Harry’s words, he was thankful that he cared. Harry was glad if he was, but that still didn’t make it any less odd. “And even if I wasn’t, what else would I do?”

“You could get someone else to do it.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“You could. You could get someone else to play your father. You too, for that matter. It wouldn’t be hard, you’re really good with the glamour’s.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Draco sighed. He sounded weary, his eyes sad. “It has to be me who does it.”

“Why?” Harry asked. It didn’t, no matter what Draco said.

“I want it to be done right. That means that I have to do it.”

“Are you worried about someone else not playing the character right?” Harry asked, more than a little confused. “Do you think that they won’t do as good of a job because the character was on the losing side?”

“That’s not it.” Draco took a breath and his head tipped back to glance at the ceiling. Harry watched his throat bob as he swallowed heavily, and his eyes flicked up to meet Draco’s gaze, who was now watching him watch Draco. He and Harry stared at each other for a few moments, _something_ passing between them that Harry wasn’t sure of. A connection, he supposed, considering they were definitely dipping their toes into ‘friends’ territory. Draco bit at his lip, before opening his mouth. “I don’t want my father to seem redeemable. I don’t want someone else to come in and take over, and make him look like anything other than what he was.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He hadn’t been expecting _that_ response. He’d thought that Draco still cared about not tarnishing his family name, but that evidently wasn’t a concern for him any longer. “You could still hand the rest of your character to someone else, if that would make it easier?”

“I don’t want it to be easy,” Draco said. “It shouldn’t be. None of the events in this film were easy when they happened to _you_ , so why should it be any different now?”

“I noticed something, when I was reading earlier,” Harry said, switching the subject slightly. “You left out the time when I almost accidentally killed you in the bathroom. Why?”

“It didn’t need to be there,” Draco said. His hand fell to his sleeve, and this time Harry did reach out and grab it, tugging it away. Draco’s eyes went wide and he stared at Harry, his lips slightly parted.

“It should be in there. It was important,” Harry said. “Why did you take it out?”

Draco swallowed, his eyes still locked on Harry’s, their faces only a foot or so apart.

“I almost killed you.”

“I deserved it,” Draco said, his voice quiet.

“Stop it,” Harry said, his frown deepening. “I’m calling in my favour, Draco. Put it in the script.”

“ _Why_?” Draco asked. “It doesn’t add anything, other than making the audience feel some kind of pity at the sight of my sixteen year old self crying on the floor.”

“It changed things for me,” Harry said. “It was important. And maybe the audience shouldn’t pity you, but it might make them try and _empathise_. You were just a kid and you were forced to do those things, Draco.”

“I don’t want them to empathise,” Draco said. “They shouldn’t.”

Harry was quiet for a moment, staring at Draco. “Put the scene in,” he said.

The next day when Harry went over to Draco’s flat, the script was lying open to a page titled ‘Sectumsempra’.

*

Harry had been knocking at Draco’s door for a good few minutes one night before he finally gave up and let himself in, calling Draco’s name out into the empty hallway. He’d be a little miffed if Draco wasn’t there for whatever reason, since they hadn’t been able to meet at all the previous week due to a gruelling filming schedule that Draco kept insisting was necessary to have the film completed on time. Harry wasn’t sure where they were up to in the filming process, but he suspected that Draco’s radio silence over the previous few days meant that he had likely been playing the role of his father for a majority of the time. Harry wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to know Draco so well, but he could clearly see that the role was taking its toll on Draco. He wasn’t sure whether it was the act of playing his father, having to act in a Death Eater costume, or some of Harry’s changes to the script that were driving him up the bend, but Harry intended to make it better, if he could.

“Draco,” Harry called out. “Come out, you git.”

“Fuck off,” Harry heard Draco mutter, and he finally caught sight of him coming through the kitchen doorway. He looked quite good, all things considered. The bits under his eyes were a little dark, but that was understandable. “I don’t recall giving you a key to my flat.”

“You left the door unlocked,” Harry shrugged.

“So you just let yourself in?”

“Yes.”

Draco stared at him for a moment, before letting out a snort of laughter. “Merlin, you really don’t abide by social customs, do you? I have no idea why I like you so much.” His eyes widened as his sentence trailed off, and he shot Harry a look like he was terrified as to what Harry’s response would be. Harry wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he was going to object to Draco finally admitting that he didn’t think that Harry was a _complete_ and utter tosser. He liked that they were friends.

“The feeling’s mutual,” Harry said. He pulled a coat off of Draco’s coat stand and held it out to him. “And because I’m such a good friend, I’m going to stop you from moping about.”

“What?” Draco said. “Sorry, I don’t think I heard that correctly.”

“I’m taking you out,” Harry said. “Get your coat. The script can wait.”

“You’re taking me out?”

“Yes.” Harry wasn’t sure what was so hard for Draco to understand about what he’d said.

“Because we’re friends?”

“Yes.” Harry shook the coat in Draco’s direction. “Come on.”

“You’re bloody obtuse, Harry,” Draco said, but he stepped forward to take the coat. “Where are we going, then?”

“You’ll see,” Harry said, holding the door open for Draco. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” Draco looked to be perking up, much to Harry’s relief.

“Good. Come on, then.”

Harry apparated them both to the same bar that Draco had taken him to weeks beforehand, landing outside with a soft thud. Draco looked appreciative at the sight of his surroundings, and gave a sharp nod.

“Nice choice.”

“I heard that some people like it quite a bit,” Harry said, winking at Draco. Draco’s cheeks went a bit pink, so Harry ushered him inside before he could get any colder. The chill _was_ a little biting, and Draco’s skin was quite pale, so it was only natural that the cold would get to him like that. “Sit down,” Harry said once they walked into the bar, making a beeline for the bartender. He ordered a large plate of nachos and got Draco two of those weird white things he’d had last time, as well as a glass of Firewhiskey for himself. Draco was sitting quietly in a booth off to the side when Harry returned with their drinks, his coat hanging over the back of the seat.

“I wasn’t expecting you to have remembered,” Draco said, nodding at the drinks clasped in Harry’s hand.

“I just asked for the thing that looked like weird melted snow, and the bartender knew exactly what I was talking about,” Harry said, shrugging. To his surprise, Draco burst into laughter, a smile lighting up his face. Harry hadn’t thought the comment was all that funny, but if it helped Draco relax than he could laugh about it all he wanted.

“So,” Draco said, taking a deep drink through the straw. His cheeks hollowed out quite a bit as he sucked, and Harry looked away quickly, lest he be caught staring and give Draco the wrong idea. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted you to relax,” Harry said, taking a sip of his Firewhiskey. “I thought you might be a bit on edge.”

“Mm,” Draco said. His eyes looked dark as he watched Harry, but that was probably a trick of the dim lighting. “There are plenty of other things I like to do to relax, you know.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve got a whole big posh routine, but a pint never hurt anyone.”

“First of all, neither of us have a pint in front of us,” Draco said, leaning forwards. He was sucking at the artificial cherry that sat atop each of his drinks. “And second, I can assure you that it isn’t at all posh. In fact, I’d say it’s quite common.”

“What, like a bath?” Harry asked.

“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Draco asked. He was frowning slightly, but the look was more intrigued than anything else.

“No?” Harry said.

“That can’t be correct,” Draco said. “Alright, let me try something else. Harry: how would you like to come over to mine tomorrow night and I’ll cook you dinner? We can have a beer and not talk about anything work related. How does that sound?”

“Brill,” Harry said, smiling. “You cook much better than me, anyway.”

“And what do you think it is that I’m asking you?” Draco said. His gaze had gone all intense again. As usual, Harry couldn’t figure out why.

“Uh, to come over for dinner?”

“And?” Draco pressed.

“And a beer?”

“Was that all?”

“You also said that we wouldn’t talk about work?”

Draco muttered something under his breath that Harry couldn’t catch, before knocking back the rest of his half-full drink.

“Alright,” Draco said, pulling his other drink towards him. “Then how do you feel about helping me pull?”

“You want me to help you pull?” Harry asked. He looked around the bar, not really seeing anyone that fit the bill. It was quite early in the night, so most of the people there were twice their age, and none were in the same league of attractiveness as Draco.

“No, I want to know if _you_ want me to pull,” Draco said.

“Uh, probably not, no.” If Harry was going to be the one making judgement calls here then he wasn’t letting Draco go home with someone that much older than him.

“Ok,” Draco said, taking a hefty gulp from his glass. “That’s something.”

They drank quite a bit in a very small time frame, Harry insisting on paying for Draco’s drinks in an effort to take his mind off of work, and Draco taking full advantage of Harry’s generosity.

“Harry,” Draco slurred, his hand slapping down on the sticky tabletop. Harry was fairly certain that there were two of Draco sitting across the booth from him, both of them somehow prettier than the one they sat beside. “Do you think I’m attractive?”

“Yes,” Harry said, remembering how Draco’s arse had looked in that stupid bloody Founders movie.

“Then _why_ don’t you say anything about it?” Draco asked. He was blinking an awful lot, his head lolling to the side a bit.

“Do you want me to?” Harry asked. Perhaps Draco was feeling a little insecure about his looks.

“ _Yes_ ,” Draco cried, slapping his hand on the table again.

“Do you think _I’m_ attractive?” Harry asked, pondering the question for a moment.

“You’re so bloody stupid,” Draco muttered, dropping his head down onto the table.

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Harry said, poking at the side of Draco’s head. “Come on, I answered yours.”

“I answered that question so bloody long ago that it’s not even funny,” Draco mumbled against the wood.

“You didn’t, I would have remembered,” Harry insisted.

“Harry,” Draco said, sitting up. He shuffled around the small circular booth so that he was sitting only a foot or two away from Harry. “What else do I need to do here?”

“Uh, what?” Harry asked. He wasn’t entirely sure that he and Draco were on the same page.

“How about flowers?” Draco asked, sitting up a little straighter. “Do you like flowers?”

“Sure,” Harry shrugged. Who didn’t like flowers?

“Ok, this is what’s going to happen,” Draco said. He pitched sideways a little, and Harry placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Draco stared at his hand for a moment before moving his gaze back to Harry’s face. He swallowed heavily, his mouth dropping open slightly. Harry figured that he must have a bit of that weird white powder from Draco’s drinks still on his lip, because Draco was staring pretty intently at his mouth.

Harry tapped him on the jaw, bringing him back from wherever he’d gone.

“Sorry,” Draco mumbled, steadying himself. “This is what’s going to happen: we’re going to go to your place tomorrow instead of mine, and we’re going to cook dinner together. Well, I’ll cook and you can help, since you’re apparently hopeless. I’ll bring you a bouquet of bloody flowers and a bottle of wine and you’re going to stop being so sodding _thick_ , alright?”

“Ok,” Harry said, though he wasn’t sure how he was being thick. That sounded like a lovely evening. “I’m glad you’re not sad anymore, Draco.”

Draco leaned back and snorted, shaking his head. “Why is it that you can tell when I’m upset about something, but not when I’m practically shoving the truth about something else in your face in a fucking gift wrapped box, Harry?”

“A box?” Harry asked, no longer following along.

“You’re an idiot,” Draco sighed. Harry must have been far, _far_ too drunk, because Draco sounded fond when he said it. “Come on, we should head home.”

Harry reached over and finished off Draco’s drink, giving him a toothy smile. Draco frowned at Harry for a moment before his lips twitched up at the corners and he leaned in towards him, resting his forehead on Harry’s shoulder.

“I really like you, Harry,” he mumbled into the collar of Harry’s shirt.

“You too, Draco,” Harry said, wrapping his free arm around Draco’s back.

He could have sworn that he felt Draco relax slightly in his embrace, like he was trusting Harry to hold him up. Harry felt the overwhelming urge to wrap his arms around Draco and squeeze tightly, letting Draco know that he didn’t have to be worried, and that Harry was there for him. So that’s what he did.

*

“Fuck,” Harry mumbled, waving his wand and sending a stack of old books out from the living room and into the study, nearly knocking one of the paintings off the wall in his haste to remove them from the room. They were Hermione’s books, he was fairly sure. He remembered Ron bringing them over one day in an attempt to get Hermione to take a break from work over her birthday, and he’d apparently not ever taken them back. Harry had no idea he still had them, but Hermione had probably been looking for them at some point. It was a miracle that he’d found them at all, considering the sheer amount of clutter Harry had somehow managed to accumulate over the past few years.

After comparing his house with Draco’s flat, Harry became painfully aware that every inch of space in his home was occupied by something, most of it unnecessary. Hell, most of it wasn’t even _his._ He wasn’t sure when his house had become a dumping ground for his friends thing’s, but it had definitely happened somewhere along the way. So far, he’d found more books that belonged to Hermione than to him, a stash of Ron’s favourite crackers, a pile of sweatshirts that Hermione had told Ron to throw out because they were too worn, a portrait that Luna swore up and down was the key to unlocking some kind of spiritual energy, Ginny’s old racing broom, a box containing the remnants of some of Neville’s old plants, and a CD that had ‘Seamus and Dean (do not watch)’. Harry had absolutely zero desire to know what that last one was, and had no idea how it had even got there. Hell, no had no idea how _any_ of the stuff had got there, aside from a few vague inklings. And those were just the things in the front living area; he didn’t even want to attempt to tackle the upstairs bedrooms. He was pretty sure that Ron had an entire closet filled with clothes Hermione had tried to get him to throw away stashed up there.

Harry was beginning to think that his Boggart would now take the shape of a bunch of indeterminate clutter if one was to appear, when the doorbell rang.

“Fuck,” Harry muttered again, whirling around to look at his decidedly not minimalistic living room. Fuck it, he’d just make sure that Draco stayed in the kitchen. The kitchen was passable, at least. That was one space that his friends hadn’t been able to completely take over.

He practically sprinted to the door, throwing it open to reveal Draco standing there with his hands behind his back.

“Hi,” Harry said, smiling widely. It was always good to see Draco, but recently it had seemed better than usual, a warm feeling spreading through his gut whenever he caught sight of him. Or maybe that was just jealousy, because Draco looked _extremely_ good in his well fitted trousers and Muggle-style button up shirt. Harry tried very hard not to remember that he’d seen what Draco looked like naked from behind, but it was hard when he was standing there in front of him looking like _that_. He wasn’t sure why Draco’s nude scene was even on his mind, actually. He should probably do a bit of soul searching about that later. Or perhaps he’d go over to Ron and Hermione’s and just watch the bloody movie again to get it out of his system. Ron liked to pretend that he didn’t like Draco’s movies, but he was certainly almost as much of a fan as Harry, something that Hermione loved to tease them both about.

“Hello,” Draco replied. His hands came out from behind his back, and Harry’s eyes widened.

“Oh good Merlin,” he mumbled, his cheeks going red.

“I did tell you in advance,” Draco said, holding out the large bouquet of flowers for Harry to take. He was _smirking_ , the fucker, like he knew exactly how he’d affected Harry. That was news to Harry, because even _he_ didn’t know how Draco was affecting him, or _why_ , for that matter. Sure, it was a little embarrassing for one’s friend to bring them an extravagant array of flowers for no reason, but Harry didn’t feel embarrassed, exactly. He wasn’t sure _how_ he felt, which was the most confusing part.

“Thank you,” Harry said, taking the flowers from Draco. “Did you also bring wine?” Of course he did, because he was a complete sod. Draco waggled the bottle triumphantly, smirking at Harry like he’d won a competition that Harry hadn’t even known he’d been entered in. “Well, come inside then. Don’t mind the clutter, I’m pretty sure every person I’ve ever known has brought something over here and neglected to take it home with them.”

“It’s nice,” Draco said as they walked down the hall.

“Don’t lie,” Harry snorted. “I’ve been meaning to fix it up for ages, but I’ve not got round to it.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Draco said. They’d reached the kitchen, so he leaned against the bench. “It’s homey, like it’s really been lived in. My place is a bit sterile.”

“Your place is lovely,” Harry said. “Blimey, I’m not sure I’ve ever gone out and bought a vase, and anything that was already here when I moved in is probably cursed.”

“How do you even survive?” Draco asked, laughing to himself as he transfigured a plate into a shining silver vase, offering it to Harry.

Harry smiled at him in thanks and placed the flowers in it, relocating the vase to the table and casting an Aguamenti charm. He frowned slightly at the flowers, turning to glance at Draco.

“Are those lilies?”

Draco nodded, fiddling with his sleeve.

“Don’t do that,” Harry said, reaching forward to tug Draco’s hand away. “I love them. Thank you.” He realized after a moment that he was still holding on to Draco’s hand, and quickly tugged his own away, his cheeks flaming red.

“What are we cooking?” Draco asked after a moment of silence.

“Spaghetti,” Harry said.

“You remember me saying that I’d help you, right?”

“I’m showing you a different way. I happen to know the special Weasley family recipe for spaghetti,” Harry insisted, resting his elbows on the counter. “Trust me, you’ll never have tasted spaghetti this good.”

“Alright,” Draco said, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. “Where are we starting?”

Harry waved his wand and the various ingredients for the source floated out from the fridge and onto the bench.

“Start by cutting these,” Harry said, reaching over and grabbing a knife from the block for Draco to use. “I’ll put the base on to simmer.”

Harry had a sneaking suspicion that Draco wasn’t taking his assigned task very seriously whenever Harry turned his back to stir the sauce, because the ratio of chopped to unchopped vegetables didn’t appear to change unless he was actively watching Draco do it. He swore that he could feel Draco’s eyes on him whenever he turned his back, and he decided to test his theory. First he attempted to catch Draco in the act by simply turning around quickly, but Draco’s reaction time was clearly faster than Harry’s was. When that didn’t work, Harry tried out a bit of naff dancing when they were supposed to have their backs to each other, engaging in light conversation as they worked. Draco didn’t say anything when Harry finished off his routine with a demented hip shimmy, so Harry figured that he must have been imagining it. There was no way Draco would have been able to hold his tongue at the sight of _that_ awful display.

Harry sighed contentedly as the fragrant smells of the sauce base wafted up towards him, and he stretched his arms above his head, groaning contentedly. He felt his shirt lift up slightly as he stretched his muscles out, tipping his head back a little to work out a kink in his neck.

The sound of something crashing to the floor made Harry whirl around, and he watched as Draco bent over to pick up the knife he’d been using to chop the vegetables, his cheeks a flaming red. His pile of chopped vegetables had _definitely_ not grown since Harry had last looked, Harry was sure of it.

“Alright?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrows at Draco.

“Fine,” Draco squeaked, washing the knife under the tap.

Harry didn’t have the chance to catch Draco out again, since he ended up just helping him cut the vegetables, lest the sauce burn before anything else could be added.

“Do you think you could do me a favour?” Draco asked a while later, as Harry was serving them their portions.

“Sure, what is it?”

“I was hoping you could run through some lines with me,” Draco said, taking the proffered bowl.

“Oh,” Harry said, mildly surprised. “Yeah, of course. What’s it for?”

“It’s, um, for a scene at the Manor,” Draco said. “It’s not one that you were around for, but I was hoping you could give me some pointers about the delivery.”

“Alright,” Harry said, carrying his bowl and two empty wine glasses over to the small kitchen table. “I’d be happy to. Now sit down and tell me what you think of the food.”

“I had a hand in making it, so it can’t be all that bad,” Draco said, shooting Harry a teasing smile.

“Shut up,” Harry replied, flicking the cap of the wine bottle at him.

The spaghetti received an extremely enthusiastic review from Draco, which sent Harry’s stomach into an odd fit of butterflies. He hadn’t expected anything less – Mrs Weasley was nothing if not a fantastic cook – but it still felt nice to hear.

“So you’re filming scenes from the Manor tomorrow, then?” Harry asked, taking a sip of his wine.

“Yes,” Draco said, swirling the liquid around in his glass. “It’s going to be on location, actually.”

Harry’s eyebrows practically hit his hairline at that comment. “You’re actually letting the cast inside the Manor?”

“Yes, for authenticity’s sake. There’s only going to be a few of them, and I’ll cast charms preventing anyone from straying from the filming location, so no one can get into anything they shouldn’t.”

“Are you going to be filming all the Manor scenes at once?” Harry asked conversationally, refilling his wine glass. There was one particular scene that had been playing on his mind for a while that he’d been meaning to talk to Draco about. It was an important one, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Draco might have tweaked it slightly. Harry wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen.

“Yes,” Draco said. “It won’t be entirely chronological, which may make it harder for the actors to follow along with the journey, but it can’t be helped.”

“So you’ll be filming the scene where I ended up getting your wand, then?” Harry asked. He felt a twist in his stomach at the thought. He had a sneaking suspicion that Draco would be putting a little bit of a biased spin on that scene as well. Not biased towards himself, but the opposite, as he’d already done a few times throughout the film.

Draco nodded, glancing at Harry over the rim of his wine glass. “Indeed.”

“Mind running me through what that looks like?” Harry asked.

Draco’s eyes narrowed minutely, but he waved his wand, levitating the script from the pocket of his trousers, and enlarging it. He sent it across the table to Harry, who plucked it out of the air.

“Why are you so interested in that scene?” Draco asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I wanted to check something.” Harry’s eyes darted over the page as he read the notes on the scene, his brows furrowing. “This isn’t completely right.”

“Oh, good Merlin,” Draco sighed, taking a large gulp of wine. “What is it now?”

“You,” Harry said, looking up and locking eyes with Draco. “You’ve done it again.”

“Done what?” Draco was frowning now, his eyes boring into Harry’s.

“Not written yourself truthfully.”

“I can assure you that everything in there is correct. I used a bloody Pensieve memory for reference.”

“Show me the memory then,” Harry said, standing up and holding out his hand.

Draco gaped at him for a moment before steeling himself and taking it, coming to stand next to Harry.

“My Pensieve is upstairs,” Harry said, nodding towards the staircase. Draco followed him up to the next floor and down a hallway, into the room that Hermione had turned into somewhat of a library. The Pensieve sat in a little cupboard style contraption that folded out whenever Harry wanted to use it, the dish currently empty of memories.

Draco glanced at him for a moment before drawing his wand and extracting the memory, releasing it into the Pensieve.

“I want you to look at something,” Harry said, taking Draco’s free hand. Draco glanced down at their joined hands and swallowed heavily, before nodding.

They entered the memory at the same time, still clutching onto each other as their vision cleared. The memory looked exactly how Harry had assumed it would, the bleak room seeming like it was sucking all the positive energy from their bodies. Harry winced at the sight of Ron and Hermione being restrained in the room at the Manor, but focused his attention on himself. His face was swollen and bulbous, like someone had pierced a hole in his cheek and pumped in some air. But what really interested him was Draco’s seventeen year old self who was currently being led over to where Harry was kneeling by various members of his family in a bid to identify Harry.

Harry tugged at Draco’s hand and led him over to where Draco’s memory form fell into a crouch in front of Harry’s distorted one.

“Look,” Harry said, pointing at Draco.

Draco did, but his face remained impassive. “Yes?”

“What do you see?” Harry asked.

“Is this a trick question?” Draco asked, raising an eyebrow. “I see you. I see myself.”

“And how do you look?” Harry asked. He watched as Draco studied himself, watched his past self look at Harry with fear in his eyes.

“Scared,” Draco said after a moment.

“Good,” Harry said, squeezing Draco’s hand. “Because that’s what I see too. I see someone in a crap position who is trying to do the right thing in any way they know how.”

“That wasn’t it,” Draco said, but Harry held up a hand to stop him.

“But because you did that, we got away. I won the war with your wand, Draco.”

Draco rolled his eyes, waving Harry off. “ _Honestly_.”

“Let’s go,” Harry said, tugging at Draco’s hand again and preparing to leave the memory.

They were still holding hands when they were released from the Pensieve, both taking in large lungful’s of air.

“Let me rewrite the scene,” Harry said after a moment.

Draco swallowed, his hand tightening around Harry’s. “Why?”

“Because I want this film to be truthful, so I’m making sure that it is.”

“Alright,” Draco said after a moment. His voice sounded so small, a tone that Harry had never heard come from between Draco’s lips before. “Would it be alright if we ran those lines now?”

“Of course,” Harry said, dropping Draco’s hand. “We can go into the living room, if you’d like?”

Once in the room, Draco asked for a moment to properly get into character, straightening his shoulders and pacing around the room a few times.

“This is all a bit exciting,” Harry said as he watched Draco pace. “Getting to see you properly act in person.”

Draco didn’t respond, his back going ramrod straight. Harry honestly didn’t hear too much of what Draco was saying once he got going, because he was too preoccupied with the whole package that was his acting skill. Harry forgot that he was watching Draco in front of him, and instead let himself imagine that he was watching Draco act out a part on a particularly immersive film screen. Draco didn’t seem to need help remembering what his lines were, which was quite impressive considering he hadn’t asked Harry to play the part of whoever else was in the scene, and was going completely off of his memory. Harry suspected that the other characters in the scene were Voldemort and a handful of Death Eaters, but he didn’t want to stop and ask Draco, lest he break his carefully cultivated concentration.

Even though it was clearly Draco standing in front of him – no glamour’s in place to add to the illusion – Harry could almost _see_ Lucius Malfoy. It probably helped that he and his son looked so very much alike, but Harry truly did believe Draco’s performance. As he started his run-through of the scene he was almost cocky, holding his head up high and speaking in clipped, haughty tones. By the end he was a quivering mess, far more like the Lucius that Harry had caught sight of close to the end of the war. Harry was sure that Draco was likely taking parts from a number of different scenes from across the film’s runtime, but it worked perfectly, like someone had edited the clips together as a teaser of what the character would go through. Draco’s portrayal of Lucius from an untouchable, politically influential figure to someone who feared for their life and that of their family was enough to give Harry chills.

“Fuck,” Harry said, once Draco stopped talking and relaxed his shoulders, somehow transforming from Lucius Malfoy into _Draco_ right in front of Harry’s eyes.

“Was that alright?” Draco asked. “Not the dialogue, because I kind of pieced that together a bit, but the portrayal?”

He looked earnest and a little frightened, as though he was waiting for Harry to hold up a hand and say ‘no, actually, that was terrible’. There was a fat chance of that happening.

“It was brilliant. You were brilliant, as usual,” Harry said. He couldn’t wipe the smile off of his face.

“Good,” Draco said, a shy smile on his lips.

“You’re really good at that, you know. Acting.”

“Of course I am,” Draco said. His smile turned from shy to somewhere between a grimace and a smirk. “It’s only fitting that I’d be good at pretending to be other people. After all, I spent most of my life pretending.”

Harry didn’t ask what he meant by that, because he was fairly sure that he knew, and that it would make Draco uncomfortable to press him on it. Knowing Draco now, Harry suspected that he had indeed been pretending for most of their time at Hogwarts. Though he’d appeared confident and confrontational, ruling the roost among the Slytherins in his year, Harry suspected that Draco had put up quite a bit of a façade in order to be more like his father, or at the very least, more like his father expected the Malfoy heir to be. Harry wasn’t sure that Draco had ever really been what his father had tried to shape him into, not deep down. Draco had proven that time and time again, when it had really counted.

*

Harry had grown so used to seeing Draco regularly that when the filming schedule for the movie tightened yet again he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Quite a few times Harry found himself wandering around his house, looking for the film script or a host of Draco’s Pensieve memories, a joke targeted towards Draco’s particular brand of dry humour on his lips. He hadn’t seen so much of Ron and Hermione since the year after the war, when they’d lived together for a bit, and they didn’t seem to know what to do with him, claiming that he was ‘sulking’.

Ron ended up kicking him out of their house after Harry tried to stay over for the third night in a row, telling him to “get yourself together, mate”. Harry supposed that he was right, but he wasn’t sure how he’d even gotten to where he was. It wasn’t like he’d ever seen Draco every day for extended periods of time, even when Harry had been allowed to go onto the set of the movie. Regardless, it was like he was missing something now, when he didn’t see Draco for a while.

It took Harry four days to send an owl telling Draco that he missed him. Well, not those words exactly, but he was fairly sure that Draco would get the gist. He received a reply almost immediately, Draco’s looping scrawl filling the small bit of parchment.

_Filming’s been cancelled for tomorrow. Come over for a drink?_

_D._

Harry sent back an enthusiastic reply, immediately grabbing his coat and heading for the door.

Draco answered his front door with a glass of wine already in his hand, looking more underdressed than Harry had ever seen him. He was wearing a worn Tutshill Tornadoes shirt and Muggle jeans, his feet bare and white against the dark floorboards of his front hall. The sight of Draco looking so stripped down and a little vulnerable sent a twisting feeling through Harry’s gut and chest, though he wasn’t sure why.

Draco held the door open for him, waving him through. He didn’t say anything as he led Harry into the living room and poured him a glass of wine, sitting on the couch and curling his feet up under him.

“I read your rewrite of the scene,” Draco said. He was looking at the window over Harry’s shoulder rather than at Harry himself.

“Ok,” Harry said slowly, taking a seat. He knew exactly which one Draco was talking about, of course. He wasn’t sure what it meant that Draco was acting how he was; did he hate the scene and wanted to yell at Harry about the changes to it? It could also have put him on edge, or made him uncomfortable, Harry supposed. The alternative was that he’d liked it, and Harry crossed his fingers that this was the correct reason. Harry also wasn’t sure exactly when Draco had read the scene; Harry had sent it through to Dave coming up on two weeks beforehand, just after Draco had given him permission to rewrite it. Harry hadn’t sent it to Draco in fear that he might reject it in favour of the objectively incorrect version he’d planned on shooting, and had decided that going through Dave would be his best option if he wanted his retelling to be in the final cut of the film.

“It was interesting,” Draco said.

Harry waited for him to continue, dangling his glass of wine from his fingertips.

“You said a lot of things in it that we couldn’t include.”

“I did,” Harry agreed, nodding.

He’d done a little more than just rewritten the director’s cues for the scene; he’d added in his own annotations. Simply tweaking the dialogue a little hadn’t seemed satisfactory to him, so he’d written out exactly what Draco had looked like during every part of the scenes their characters would share at Malfoy Manor. He’d studied his own Pensieve memory of the incident a number of times and outlined exactly how scared and reluctant Draco’s seventeen year old self had looked at the time. He’d written about the pressures that everyone had been putting on Draco to identify him, and how Draco still hadn’t. He’d written that Draco had been brave in the only way he’d known how.

He had left the scene where Draco had allowed Harry to take his wand relatively untouched, but had added in his own cues to that as afterthoughts. The way Draco had written it made it sound like he’d held onto the wands with all his might, that he’d have rather died than let Harry take them and use them to escape. That just hadn’t been true, so Harry had said that. He wrote how Draco did put up a token fight, but that he’d _let_ Harry take the wands from him, that he’d relaxed his grip and hadn’t come after Harry when he’d been defeated, how he’d sat back and allowed Harry and his friends to escape the certain death they would have met had Voldemort made his way to the Manor. Harry wrote that he couldn’t have done it without Draco, whether Draco fully meant to help him or not. He wrote that it didn’t matter what his original intentions were, because Draco helped him win the war either way.

“You left a lot of notes,” Draco said, putting down his glass. “Dave was quite interested by them.”

“I’m sure he was,” Harry said.

“Is that really how you see it?” Draco asked, biting at his lip. “That’s what that day looks like in your mind?”

“It looks like that in your mind too,” Harry said. “We used your memory in the Pensieve first, remember?”

Harry watched as Draco took a deep breath, worrying at his lip with his teeth. “We’re shooting the first bit of the Battle of Hogwarts tomorrow,” Draco said.

“Wow, that went by fast,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows.

“We’ve been shooting for nearly eighteen hours a day these last few weeks, Harry,” Draco said wryly. “I’m surprised that we’re not further along, actually.”

“Why such long days?” Harry asked. It made sense now how Draco had seemingly gone missing over the past few weeks, though he did feel like a bit of a bad friend for not knowing that he was working such long hours.

“Dave and I thought it would help the actors mimic the conditions of the time during the war,” Draco replied. He had picked up his glass of wine again. Harry could see the dark red liquid pooling a little in the indent on Draco’s lip that he had made with his teeth.

“Is it working?” Harry asked, still looking at Draco’s lip.

“Yes. Though we’ll all certainly be glad once it’s over.”

“That means you’re shooting my death soon, right?”

“Yes,” Draco said. He looked incredibly unnerved by the thought, actually. “In two days.”

“You never did ask me about that, you know.”

“We’re not showing it onscreen,” Draco said. “That part will be more ambiguous, leaving more of the mystery intact.”

“I would have thought that would be a big selling point,” Harry said. He’d expected his death to be shown in full detail, and he didn’t necessarily object to it like he did to some of the other deaths he’d fought to take off screen.

“Dave wanted it in there,” Draco said, glancing at Harry. “I disagreed.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to see you die in front of me,” Draco said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

And Harry supposed that that was fair. It wasn’t like he would want to see someone who looked practically identical to Draco die right in front of him either, even despite knowing that he would come back, that he’d be alright.

“I’d like for you to come to the last day on set, if you’re agreeable,” Draco said, running a hand through his hair.

Harry watched as the light strands ran through his fingers, and he itched to reach out and touch them himself. Harry frowned at his train of thought, shaking his head from side to side.

“Is that a no?” Draco asked, a furrow forming between his brows.

“No, no,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I’d love to come. I just got distracted.”

“By?”

“Nothing,” Harry said. The last thing he wanted to do was completely embarrass himself by admitting that he’d gotten distracted by Draco’s looks. Merlin, Draco would tease him for _ages_ if he found out.

“I’ll owl you when we have the exact date nailed down. It could still change, depending on how fast we get through the scenes.”

“How is it that you can shoot everything so much faster than Muggle filmmakers can?” Harry asked. He’d been wondering for a while, but he’d always forgotten to properly ask.

“Memory charms and basic spell work, mostly,” Draco said. “The cast doesn’t forget what they need to be doing if it’s impossible for them to forget their lines, and there’s no travel time since we apparate everywhere. We cast energy charms on the longer days, and we usually only ever need to shoot a scene a few times. It all works quite well, really. Don’t go blabbing about all that, by the way. Those are trade secrets, Harry.”

Harry mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key. “I’m a locked trunk.”

“Good.” Draco sighed, rolling his shoulders. “Now, tell me what you’ve been up to so I can forget about work for a bit.”

Harry assumed that Draco wouldn’t be all too interested in hearing about his boring nights pacing about the house, and his few days of squatting at Ron and Hermione’s place, but Draco seemed genuinely engaged the entire time, despite the truly boring details that Harry was rattling off. As Draco relaxed and sunk back into the couch, his body turned towards Harry as they laughed together, Harry decided that there was nothing else he’d rather be doing. He wouldn’t trade that quiet night sitting on Draco’s couch for all the wild nights in the world.

*

The final day of filming fell on a Friday, nearly a week after Harry had gone over to Draco’s. Draco’s owl was short, giving only a few basic details about what was going to be happening that day, and that Harry was – under no circumstances – to talk to any of the cast or crew, bar the house elves, until filming had completely wrapped.

When Harry walked into the warehouse he almost turned on his heel and left again, thinking he was in the wrong building. The only thing that clued him in to being in the correct place was the house elf who materialised in front of him, a finger pressed against her lips, as she ushered him through the large room. The warehouse appeared far smaller now, and Harry supposed that maybe it was. It would make sense, that once a set was no longer needed that it would be dismantled and its pieces either sold or destroyed, and that there would no longer be a need for such a cavernous building to contain everything in. Harry had long suspected that an undetectable extension charm had been used to make the warehouse big enough for most of the filming to occur inside it, and that proved it to him. The warehouse looked to be maybe a third of the size it had been when Harry had first walked into it, and most of the rows of shelving were gone. It was easier to see the different sets that were still being used now that the space was more open, and Harry would see a large courtyard, a bridge, and a forest. He saw something that he was fairly sure was supposed to be the room of a house, but he couldn’t be sure without the rest of the pieces there.

The cast and crew had been completely transformed from the people Harry had seen back when filming was still fairly near its beginning, and he wouldn’t have recognised any of them if he hadn’t known exactly who they were playing. Each person looked haunted and a little distraught, their faces smeared with what Harry knew was supposed to be dirt and blood. None of them stopped to gawk at him any longer, and for that he was thankful.

Harry was sure that he was imagining it, but he could swear that he smelt dark magic in the air, the scent heavy like smoke and ozone. He wouldn’t have put it past either Draco or Dave to have done it deliberately, to give the cast a more immersive experience.

Harry didn’t recognise Draco when he first saw him, and he did a double take when he searched for his face in the crowd of the scene that was filming. It looked to be after the battle, each person huddled close with their friends and family. If Harry hadn’t known that Draco was playing the role of his father, than he would have thought that Lucius himself had somehow wandered onto the set. Harry’s jaw dropped open as he watched the man who looked exactly like Lucius Malfoy embrace a woman and a boy, both with fair hair. Their faces were lowered, but Lucius’ was turned upwards. His cheeks were sunken and his face bleak, his long hair hanging in clumps rather than shining in the light, like Draco’s shorter hair often did. It was a total physical transformation, and Harry wasn’t sure how Draco had managed to pull it off. He wished right then that he’d somehow snuck onto the set a few times during filming to watch Draco act the part of Lucius. The physical portrayal combined with the emotional one that Draco had demonstrated to Harry a few weeks back would be incredible on film, Harry knew. He wished he could have seen it in person, but, in a way, he was glad that he hadn’t. It would likely have been incredibly disturbing to watch, and now Harry would get the full experience of Draco’s acting abilities when he saw the final cut of the film when it hit theatres.

The scene was a short one, with Dave calling cut not long after Harry had quietly walked over. He called out a couple of directions that Harry didn’t fully understand, and then the bulk of actors were moving. They walked together in a group, the actors playing Harry, Ron, and Hermione sticking close to Dave’s side.

Harry lost sight of Draco in the crowd, so he followed everyone as they walked off of the courtyard set. They didn’t go far, only to the next full set over, but this time only the three lead actors walked onto the set. Though shooting was apparently done for most of the other actors, they seemed content to stay and watch the rest of the scenes. Harry supposed that perhaps they had been told to, and that it was a tactic to assist them in letting go of the particular brand of method acting that Draco and Dave had insisted upon. It would do them good to see the happy ending unfold for themselves after they’d been pushed to the brink, Harry thought.

The scene was a simple one, with Harry fixing his wand and speaking with Ron and Hermione about his intentions to return the other wand to its rightful place in Dumbledore’s tomb. Though Harry listened hard he heard no mention of the wand he had won from Voldemort being the Elder Wand, and he wondered if Draco had no idea about the Hallows, or if he’d simply elected to leave the specific details out as he’d done with the Horcruxes.

The scene ended with Hermione taking his and Ron’s hands, all three of them standing tall together.

Though Harry thought that filming was done, there was apparently one more scene to shoot. The final scene to be filmed took place in the set that Harry had suspected was supposed to be a room in a larger house. It was soon revealed to be the film’s version of the Burrow. The scene showed the complete Weasley family, as well as the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix, along with a number of Harry’s friends who had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, sitting around a long table and enjoying a meal together. The scene was light-hearted, and was a direct contrast to those which had been filmed just before it.

Harry smiled as he watched the actors – their faces wiped clean of almost all of the gory makeup – laugh and joke together, so like the real life Weasley gatherings he regularly attended. It was a good end to the film, Harry thought. The scene was full of exactly what Harry had wanted in his life after the war: happiness, safety, and hope. It made his stomach twist with happiness, and he was grateful to Draco for including it in the final cut, even though it hadn’t played out exactly the same way in real life.

When Dave called cut on the scene all the actors all broke into cheers, hugging each other and slapping each other on the back. They were visibly livelier than they had been when Harry had walked in earlier, which was good to see. A few of them took notice of him and approached him, though none asked for autographs, which is what he had expected to be bombarded with requests for. In fact, each person either thanked him, congratulated him, or empathised with him about his time during the war. One of the younger actresses whispered that she didn’t know how he’d managed to do it as she hugged him tightly, and an older man patted him on the back as he shook his hand firmly, thanking him for what he’d done for the wizarding world. Harry’s cheeks stayed burning for the duration of the short conversations, still not used to such interactions even after all this time.

He found Draco relatively quickly once the crowd had started to disperse, his face wiped clean of the glamour’s he had used to look more like his father. He was beaming as he talked to Dave, each of them with an arm thrown over the others’ shoulders. Draco had his head tipped back as he laughed, pointing to something on the tiny screen of the video camera that Dave was levitating in front of them at around chest height.

Dave let out a cheer when he caught sight of Harry, waving him over and clapping a hand on his back.

“Excellent work, mate,” he cried, squeezing Harry’s shoulder.

“Thanks,” Harry said, smiling shyly. “The same to you two, as well. It’s going to look great.”

“It is,” Draco agreed, smiling at Harry.

“You coming out for a few drinks tonight?” Dave asked, turning to Harry. “It’s a bit of a tradition that everyone goes out after the last day of filming as a bit of a detox.”

“Sure,” Harry shrugged.

“There ya go, he’s coming,” Dave said, nudging Draco’s side with his elbow.

“Shut up,” Draco mumbled, his cheeks going a bit pink. “I was going to ask him myself.”

“Sure you were,” Dave said. “I have no doubt that you’d have asked him to come _as friends_.”

“We _are_ friends,” Harry said, his brow furrowing. Did Dave think they still disliked each other, or something?

“Come on,” Draco said. His fingers wrapped around Harry’s wrist and he tugged him away from Dave, the black material of his robes swirling around him like a dark cloud.

“You looked great out there,” Harry said once they’d stopped next to one of the few rows of shelves that were left. “I can’t wait to see what it looks like in the end.”

“Do you think you’ll come to the first screening?” Draco asked. He had his wand out and was enlarging a bag that had been tucked in the pocket of his robes.

“Do you want me to?” Harry asked. He’d never gone to a premiere before – despite the tickets that always ended up in the mail – but he wouldn’t mind going if Draco asked him to.

“Yes,” Draco said. He pulled what looked like a complete outfit from the enlarged bag, and held it out towards Harry. “Hold this for me, would you?”

Harry did, and Draco cast a spell that Harry had never seen before. It changed his outfit from the one he was wearing to the one that Harry had been holding, right down to the shoes.

“Huh,” Harry said, more than a little impressed.

“It makes outfit changes far quicker on set,” Draco explained.

A house elf materialised in front of him and took the clothes from his hand, smiling when Draco thanked them.

“So you’ll come to the premiere?” Draco asked, smoothing down the front of his outfit. He was wearing a green shirt and what was possibly the tightest pair of jeans Harry had ever seen, along with a pair of dragonhide boots. Once again, Harry felt incredibly underdressed standing next to him.

“With you?” Harry asked.

“Well, people usually take a date to those,” Draco said, leaning against the shelf behind him, crossing one foot over the other.

“Oh, right,” Harry said, his cheeks going red. He didn’t know why that hadn’t occurred to him.

Draco sighed, rubbing the forehead with one of his hands. “Harry?”

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go to the premiere with me?”

“But I thought you said that people usually take dates?” Harry asked, blinking slowly.

Draco looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “You’re not this thick, I _know_ you’re not. You’d not have been able to defeat Voldemort at sodding _eleven_ years old if you were this bloody thick.”

“Uh, I’m not following,” Harry said.

“No, of course not.” Draco sighed again and stepped towards him, his right hand coming up to clasp Harry’s wrist. “Come to the premiere with me.”

Harry nodded once, biting at his lip. “Alright.”

“Good. Now let’s go get a drink before I slap you upside the head.”

Harry was still a little confused, but he followed Draco anyway.

The cast and crew convened at a relatively large bar in London, the place empty aside from the bartenders.

“We hired the place out for the night,” Draco explained as various cast members streamed in behind them. “Dave always likes to go a bit all out after a project finishes as a reward for everyone.”

“Understandable,” Harry nodded. “There wouldn’t be anywhere big enough otherwise.”

“Firewhiskey?” Draco asked, leaning one elbow against the bar. “Actually, make that four.”

“ _Four_?” Harry cried, his eyes going wide.

“Two for each of us,” Draco elaborated. “I don’t want you so sloshed that you can’t walk.”

“Good call,” Harry said, nodding seriously.

“So, Harry,” Draco said, a good half an hour later. They were leaning against one of the walls at the back of the bar, watching as the various cast and crew members who worked on the film talked and laughed and danced as they filled the large room. “I need some advice.”

“Alright,” Harry said, intrigued. “What on?”

“Dating,” Draco said.

“Oh.” Harry didn’t recognise the feeling that ripped through his gut at the prospect of Draco _dating_ , but it felt sharp and sour, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. “What about it?”

“I need to let someone know that I’m interested in them – have been for quite a while, actually – but I don’t know how to tell them. Any pointers?”

“Uh,” Harry said, wracking his brain. Though – for some reason – he absolutely _hated_ the thought of Draco going out and dating, he didn’t want to lie to him. If Draco was trusting him, then Harry would be truthful. “Aside from just asking them out?”

“For the purpose of this conversation, let’s say that I _have_ asked them, but they haven’t gotten the hint, per se. What would you do then?”

“Ask them again?” Harry said, shrugging. “I don’t really know. I don’t date much.”

“Sure,” Draco snorted, rolling his eyes.

“It’s true,” Harry said, poking at Draco’s arm. “It’s really hard when everybody knows you. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about, actually.”

“When did you last date someone?” Draco asked, turning to fully face Harry.

“Uh, long term or short?”

“Let’s say long. Long being longer than six months.”

Harry wracked his brain for a moment, before saying “maybe four years ago”.

“No,” Draco said, shaking his head. “Come off it.”

“I told you, I don’t date. Never really have,” Harry said.

“Ok, let’s move on. We’ll say that asking them to date you isn’t an option. How would you go about signalling to someone that you wanted to date them?”

Draco’s face was intense, and it sent a fresh wave of _something_ through Harry’s gut, that awful sour feeling. Draco must really like whoever he was wanting advice for, if he was pushing Harry so hard.

“I suppose I would try to spend time with them as much as I could without directly asking them out?” Harry said. “Maybe buy them a gift, or cook them dinner? Sorry, I know I’m not much help.”

“No, no, this is good,” Draco said, nodding. “Alright. So, you’re saying that spending extra time together, buying gifts, and cooking dinner for someone would constitute the signalling of romantic interest in your eyes?”

“I suppose,” Harry said. “Hey, how come you didn’t tell me that you were interested in someone? I could help you a little more if I knew who it was. It’s not Dave, is it?”

Draco’s bark of laughter was loud, startling both of them a little. Draco clapped his hands over his mouth and snorted into his palms.

“What?”

“Harry, have a bit of a think about something for a moment, would you?” Draco said, leaning a little closer. “Has anyone done _any_ of those things for you recently? Any, or perhaps fucking _all_ of those things?”

“I’d know if someone had,” Harry replied. The lights were bouncing off of Draco’s skin in a way that made him look almost ethereal. Draco’s lips parted slightly as Harry watched. He stepped closer to him, their chests almost pressed together.

“Think a little harder,” Draco said. His breath was warm as it washed over Harry’s ear, making him shiver a little.

Embarrassingly, there was a part of him that was certainly thinking a little harder at Draco’s sudden proximity, and Harry felt his cheeks grow warm. Merlin, he couldn’t get hard over something as simple as Draco standing close to him. He didn’t want to anger or offend Draco with something like that.

“Wrack your brain a bit here, Harry,” Draco said. He still hadn’t stepped back.

Harry swallowed heavily, his eyes slipping closed. He decided to do what Draco said, and hoped that it would distract him enough that his slowly filling erection would go down a tad so that it was unnoticeable. Well, the only people that had cooked dinner for him recently were Ron, Hermione, and Draco, so that was the first point done. He wasn’t sure what constituted as being a gift, but he supposed that the flowers that Draco had bought him could be one. The wine too, since he’d left it at Harry’s house. The only person he’d been spending copious amounts of time with had also been Draco.

He burst into laughter after his brain finally kicked into gear, slapping a hand over his mouth to contain the sound.

“Did you figure it out yet?” Draco asked. He was still standing closer to Harry than one might stand when talking to a friend, but their chests weren’t pressed together any longer.

“Maybe,” Harry said, blinking slowly.

Surely he was wrong. There was no way that Draco had been trying to tell him he was interested in him for _months_. There was no way.

“So, um, how long have you been trying to ask me out for?” Harry asked.

“Oh, I’ve definitely asked you out,” Draco said, a smirk playing on his lips. “We’ve gone out together many times. You just didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that those were supposed to be dates.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Harry muttered. “ _Fuck_ , sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Draco said, shaking his head fondly. “It was quite funny, after a bit. Ridiculously frustrating, but funny.”

“I’m an idiot,” Harry said, groaning. “Fuck, you’ve been trying for _months_.”

“Does the fact that you haven’t run away screaming mean that you’re not completely opposed to the idea?”

Harry nodded, not really sure what to say. “I’m not opposed.”

“Thank Merlin,” Draco muttered, stepping closer. “Could I kiss you now? Because it’s something I’ve been trying to do for far too long now.”

He didn’t get the chance, because Harry got there first. Harry pressed himself against Draco as he slid their lips together, pushing Draco back firmly against the wall. Draco gasped in surprise, and Harry sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. Draco’s arms came up to encircle Harry’s waist, one palm pressing into the small of his back, the other cupping the back of his neck. Harry groaned as Draco took control of the kiss, moving their mouths together at a controlled pace.

“God,” Harry gasped, wrenching his mouth away from Draco’s. “Hit me, please.”

“Why?” Draco asked. His lips were working a path across Harry’s jaw and down his neck, nipping at the skin. Harry gasped with every press of Draco’s teeth and groaned with every push of his lips and tongue against Harry’s skin.

“Because we could have been doing this for _ages_ ,” Harry said, tipping his head back. Draco’s mouth latched onto the newly offered skin, and Harry’s hands came up to clutch at his forearms.

“Better late than never,” Draco replied, before his mouth was too preoccupied to talk.

As Harry stood there in the bar, wrapped around Draco, he became aware of where exactly they were. There was no way nobody had taken any notice of them yet, despite the relatively isolated spot they had chosen to stand in.

“Fuck, Draco,” Harry muttered. He slid a hand into Draco’s hair and tugged, pulling his face upwards. Draco pressed his lips to Harry’s again, licking into his mouth. His hands had drifted down to Harry’s arse, making themselves known when he squeezed Harry’s cheeks firmly. “Fuck, alright. Draco.”

“Yes?” Draco asked, separating their lips a fraction.

“We shouldn’t do this here,” Harry said. He was breathing heavily, the air coming in gasps. He was rock hard in his jeans, his cock pressing against Draco’s thigh.

“Does that mean you _want_ to continue?” Draco asked. His lips brushed against Harry’s as he spoke.

Harry didn’t reply, grinding his hard cock against Draco instead.

“Alright,” Draco said, chuckling in a low voice. “People are going to notice us leaving, you know. What should we tell them?”

“Well, if we don’t leave right now, then I’m going to tell everyone that I’m leaving to go get properly buggered by my boyfriend.” Harry cared little about what he was saying at that point, his entire being narrowed down to the feeling of his cock rocking against Draco’s body.

“Is that what I am, then?” Draco had pulled back slightly, much to Harry’s annoyance.

“You can’t honestly tell me that you spent that long wooing me but you don’t want to date me.”

“No, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what _you_ wanted,” Draco said.

“It is. I’m a bloody idiot, but I _do_ want this,” Harry said. He’d never been the most observant person, but hopefully Draco could be vigilant enough for the both of them. “Take me home with you.”

Draco nodded, sucking his lower lip into his mouth.

Draco didn’t wait until they were outside to apparate, just grabbed Harry’s arm and went for it. They landed in Draco’s living room in a tangled mess of limbs, both gripping at each other as hard as they could. Draco walked Harry backwards down a hallway, pressing him against what Harry was fairly sure was a closed door. Harry’s head knocked back into it when Draco moved to lick and suck at his throat, no doubt bringing spots of colour to the surface that would be there in the morning. Harry found that he very much liked the thought of something that Draco had put there staying on his skin. Draco evidently agreed.

“Fuck,” Harry moaned when Draco cupped him through his jeans, stopping only to push the button of his jeans through the hole. “Merlin, yes.”

Draco’s hand felt ridiculously good when it wrapped around him, warm and tight as it moved up and down his shaft. Harry spread his legs as far as the jeans around his knees would allow him, and rocked his hips forward into Draco’s fist. Draco was making low sounds in his throat that Harry could feel through the lips that were pressed to his Adam’s apple.

“Stop, stop,” Harry cried, batting at Draco’s hand. “Fuck, I’m not going to last.”

“So don’t,” Draco said, and moved his hand faster.

Harry moaned low in his throat, the sound of it breaking when Draco squeezed his fist tighter. “ _God_ , yes.”

“You sound so good,” Draco whispered against Harry’s throat, his teeth grazing Harry’s skin. “Fuck, are you going to come soon?”

“Yeah,” Harry gasped, his eyes squeezing shut. “Yes, Draco, _fuck_.”

“Come for me, Harry,” Draco said, and Harry did. He groaned loudly as he came, spurting over Draco’s rapidly moving fist. Draco milked his orgasm from him easily, his lips moving wetly over the skin of Harry’s neck and jaw.

Harry practically fell against Draco after the waves of his orgasm stopped, resting his head against Draco’s shoulder. He pressed a soft kiss to the side of Draco’s neck, nipping at the skin gently when one of Draco’s hands reached around to squeeze his arse.

“Did you want to?” Draco asked, his hand sliding down the curve of Harry’s arse cheeks.

“Yeah,” Harry said, stepping back. He kicked his jeans and pants off, fumbling with the knob of the door behind him. Draco followed him through, spelling his hand clean and stripping off his shirt. Harry groaned when Draco’s upper body came into view, every bit as perfect as it had always looked onscreen. Merlin, how he hadn’t realised that he’d been ridiculously attracted to Draco for _ages_ , he had no idea. He’d always put it down to more of an appreciation of Draco’s work than of Draco’s physical form. Evidently it was both, if the valiant effort his cock was making to get hard again was any indication.

Draco stepped forwards to pull Harry’s hoodie and shirt over his head, tossing them somewhere in the direction of the bed and muttering about “stupid sodding Muggle clothes”. Harry felt Draco toe off his shoes, and he quickly followed suit. He stood there naked in front of Draco for a moment, just letting Draco look. He liked the way Draco’s eyes darkened as his gaze roamed over Harry’s body, pausing over his cock.

“Can you get hard again?” Draco asked, reaching forward to tug gently on Harry’s bollocks.

“Definitely,” Harry replied. He fumbled for the front of Draco’s ridiculously tight jeans, nudging the button through the hole and tugging the zipper down. He peeled Draco’s jeans down his legs gently, kneeling to better help him step out of them. It occurred to him then that he was on his knees in front of a very interested Draco, who was wearing only his pants. Harry glanced up at Draco to see him gazing down at him, his eyes dark and his mouth slightly parted. Harry’s lips dropped open a little in response and Draco’s hand fell to his crotch, palming himself through his underwear. “Can I?” Harry asked. He pressed his face to Draco’s thigh, sucking a mark into the dark cotton.

Draco didn’t bother giving him a verbal reply, instead yanking down his pants and kicking them somewhere behind him. Harry’s hands were on him in an instant, tugging Draco closer with splayed hands on the backs of his thighs. Draco groaned loudly as Harry wrapped his lips around the tip of his cock, his tongue pressing against the head.

“God, please,” Draco groaned. The fingers of one hand came down to wrap through Harry’s own that was pressed against Draco’s thigh, linking their digits together. Draco squeezed Harry’s fingers hard when Harry sucked firmly, pulling more of Draco’s cock into his mouth.

It had been quite a while since Harry had done this, but he didn’t seem to be too rusty, if Draco’s loud moans were any indication. Draco squeezed his fingers hard whenever Harry did something he particularly liked, which helped Harry learn quite quickly. He had Draco gasping within a few minutes, his thighs shaking under Harry’s palms.

Harry shifted backwards on his thighs, letting Draco’s cock slip from between his lips. “Where’s your wand?”

“My what?” Draco asked, his hips rocking unconsciously towards Harry’s face.

“Your wand,” Harry repeated, wrapping his hand around Draco’s cock, pumping slowly.

Draco made a tortured sound low in his throat and held his hand out to the side, his wand coming to rest in his palm. Harry’s rhythm on his cock faltered slightly when he saw it, his mouth dropping open at the casual display of wandless magic. Draco didn’t seem to notice, handing his wand to Harry without question. It felt familiar in his palm, the magic responding to him easily. Harry reached behind himself and cast a stretching and lubricating charm, tossing Draco’s wand up onto the bed when he was finished with it.

“Bed?” Draco asked, tugging Harry’s hand away from his cock. He helped Harry up to a standing positon, licking into his mouth and cupping Harry’s arse with his palms. He pulled open the cheeks of Harry’s arse slightly, slipping two fingers into his stretched hole.

“God yes,” Harry groaned, stepping away from Draco and towards the bed. He clambered onto Draco’s bedspread, lying on his stomach and spreading his legs.

“Fuck,” Draco groaned weakly, and Harry felt two fingers slip into his hole again.

“That’s the idea,” Harry replied, rocking his hips back against Draco’s hand. He groaned when Draco pressed a third finger in him, stretching him a little more than the spell had.

Draco withdrew his fingers and nudged at Harry’s hip. He bent over Harry, his lips brushing against Harry’s shoulder. “Turn over.”

Harry did, spreading his legs to accommodate Draco’s position between his thighs. Draco wasted no time hiking them up, pressing one to the side and hooking the other up around his body. He pressed his chest to Harry’s, kissing him deeply and pulling him open.

“God, yes,” Harry groaned when he felt the head of Draco’s cock finally press against his rim. It felt so much bigger than his fingers, and Harry rolled his hips in an effort to get it inside.

“Be patient,” Draco said, nipping at Harry’s bottom lip. “I’m savouring this.”

“Please, Draco,” Harry groaned, tightening his leg around Draco’s body.

“Fuck,” Draco said, rolling his hips forward, and forcing the head of his cock into Harry.

“ _Yes_ ,” Harry moaned as Draco pressed into him in one continuous slide, not stopping until his hips cradled the shape of Harry’s arse. “Draco, fuck, you feel so _good_.”

Draco pressed his face against Harry’s collarbone, his breaths coming in gasps. He started to roll his hips, his cock moving in and out in a torturous rhythm.

“Wanted to do this for so long,” Draco groaned. He rolled his hips harder, rubbing up against Harry in all the right places. “You feel incredible, Harry.”

Harry’s hard cock began to bounce against his stomach as Draco picked up the pace, fucking his cock into Harry faster and faster. Harry’s head tipped back as Draco’s thrusts increased in pressure, his lips falling open and his eyes slipping closed.

“Fuck, _Harry_ ,” Draco moaned, his thrusts stuttering. “Fuck, please touch yourself.”

Harry’s hand slipped from the damp skin of Draco’s shoulder to own stomach, his fingers trailing down until they wrapped around his shaft. He arched up into his own touch as Draco fucked into him, his arse clenching down around Draco’s cock as he moaned.

“Fuck, I’m close,” Harry gasped, his hand moving faster over his cock.

Draco whimpered into Harry’s neck as Harry clenched down around him again. Harry’s back gradually started to arch as he felt his orgasm start to take over, his hand pumping faster as his hips snapped up towards his fist. Harry’s orgasm ripped through him as he twisted his hand over himself, moaning Draco’s name into his skin. Draco fucked him through the waves of his orgasm, smearing Harry’s release over their stomachs. Harry felt more than heard Draco come, the blood still rushing in his ears after his orgasm. Draco kissed him as he came, grinding his hips against Harry as he spurted inside him, his breaths hitching whenever Harry’s arse clenched down around him.

Draco held himself up on shaking arms in an effort to keep his weight off of Harry as they breathed against each other’s cheeks, their eyes still pressed shut. Harry reached up to tug Draco back down on top of him, kissing him deeply.

“Shit,” Draco mumbled, rolling off of Harry and staring up at the ceiling.

“You alright?” Harry laughed, rolling onto his side to face Draco.

“I think you’ve ruined me, Harry Potter,” Draco said, but the way he said it made it sound like a good thing. Harry was fairly certain that Draco might have ruined him right back.

“Wand?” Harry asked. He could have gotten it himself, but he quite liked the easy display of wandless magic Draco offered up, handing his newly acquired wand to Harry, who used it to clean them up. He wiggled slightly, enjoying the dull ache in his arse that he knew would stick around for at least a little while.

“Are you staying?” Draco asked. His eyes looked huge when Harry glanced at them, grey and shining slightly, something brewing beneath the surface.

“Can I?” Harry asked.

Draco nodded, tugging him in close. “You _did_ imply that we were officially dating earlier.”

“Does that mean that you’ll make me breakfast?” Harry asked, tucking his face against Draco’s neck.

“If you ask nicely,” Draco said, turning out the lights. “Then I might.”

Harry fell asleep before he could ask nicely, but he still found Draco in the kitchen the next morning flipping pancakes at the stove and wearing nothing but Harry’s Muggle hoodie. Harry pressed his face sleepily against the back of Draco’s neck, feeling Draco relax into his embrace.

“You know, I wasn’t exactly truthful with you about something,” Draco said, transferring the pancakes from the pan to a plate.

“Oh?” Harry said, yawning against Draco’s neck.

“I may have slightly misled you on the level of security my finished scripts are kept under.” Draco turned to face him, a sheepish look on his face. He laughed as he took in Harry’s sleepy expression, tugging his chin towards him for a kiss. “What was it I told you, that the script couldn’t be more than fifty feet away from me?”

“Mm,” Harry said, yawning into his palm. He took the plate Draco handed to him and ambled over to the table.

“I might have stretched the truth a little.”

“What was it instead, a hundred feet?” Harry asked, tugging Draco into the chair directly next to him.

“Try maybe infinite feet.”

Harry blinked blearily, not really following.

“There isn’t a distance restriction,” Draco explained, smiling to himself. “There’s security, of course, but nothing to do with distance. I just don’t like people viewing my work if I’m not in a position to defend it, if need be. Also, I wasn’t sure how else I could get you to hang around at the beginning, so I figured that was my best option.”

Harry snorted, shaking his head. “You’re such a bloody Slytherin,” he said fondly.

“Also, I think I might change the name of the film,” Draco said oh so casually, as if that wasn’t a fairly huge deal.

“What to?” Harry asked, settling his fork down to better watch Draco.

“Harry.”

“Yes?”

“No, that’s what I’m changing it to. ‘Potter’ just seems too … distant,” Draco said, shrugging slightly. “It probably seems silly, I know.”

“It doesn’t,” Harry said, shaking his head. “It’s brilliant. You’re a bit brilliant.”

“Of course,” Draco said, but he preened under the compliment all the same.

*

The film was an enormous success, as all of Draco’s projects were. Harry had expected nothing less, but this one felt different; this one felt special. Not just to Harry, either. The general consensus was that _Harry_ was Draco and Dave’s best work. Draco’s smile seemed to grow with each positive review the _Prophet_ printed about the film, which came in a constant stream.

It was a little odd, attending a premiere. There were the usual crowds, reporters, and flashing lights that Harry had become accustomed to in varying quantities over the years, but it was different this time. People weren’t there to see Harry, they were there to see _Draco_. People still wanted to talk to Harry, of course – the film was about him, after all – but it was Draco who everyone was really excited about. Harry found that he really quite liked it, standing a little off to the side as Draco gave an interview about the film, approaching when Draco held his hand out for Harry to take.

They hadn’t talked about publically announcing their relationship at the premiere, but it had just sort of happened. Neither of them had mentioned it, so it didn’t even cross Harry’s mind that perhaps he shouldn’t press a kiss to Draco’s cheek whilst having their photo taken. Draco’s cheeks had gone red but his pleased smile had said it all, so Harry found that he didn’t mind the added scrutiny one bit.

The film was phenomenal, in Harry’s opinion. Of course it was, because it couldn’t not be. Though wizarding films tended to be a good few hours longer than Muggle ones thanks to a few handy charms, Harry found that he didn’t lose interest once throughout the long runtime. The actor’s portrayal of him was unnervingly accurate, and it felt like he was actually watching his friends onscreen as they moved through their teenage years. But it was Draco who really took his breath away. Both of his characters were beautifully done, their pain understated rather than obvious, but glaringly _there_ all the same. Despite Draco not playing the main character in either of his roles, Harry’s eyes were drawn to him whenever he came onscreen.

Sitting there in the theatre, holding Draco’s hand tightly as they watched the events of Harry’s life play out, Harry found himself feeling differently about it all than he had before. Seeing everything as a third party observer made him recognise just how much bigger than he and Draco it all was. Not the film, but the events that it showcased. The things he’d done during his school years had been important, and it was easy to see that now with it all laid out in front of him. It made him feel both insignificant and impossibly tall at the same time, knowing that he had truly made a difference in a way that was bigger than he was.

And perhaps Harry had been wrong, he thought to himself as he squeezed Draco’s hand tightly as the film received a standing ovation as the credits began to roll, Draco’s first name getting an extremely warm reception. He’d been wrong that he couldn’t do any worse than have a film made about his life. Perhaps, Harry thought, that allowing Draco Malfoy to make a film about his life hadn’t been the worst decision he’d ever made. As it turned out, it was actually the best thing that had ever happened to him.


End file.
